


The Better End

by Juliette1713



Category: Northern Exposure
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27252652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juliette1713/pseuds/Juliette1713
Summary: If weinsiston Joel's whole Mononash transformation and departure in season 6 being real as well as Chris/Maggie being a thing, here's a way to fix all of that by the time Tranquility Base rolls around, and end the show the way it should have ended...with a dance at Maggie's placeAn excellent suggestion I saw on Tumblr :)  This'll take forever and be far too wordy, but that's me.
Relationships: Joel Fleischman/Maggie O'Connell, Maggie O'Connell/Chris Stevens
Comments: 16
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

Maggie hated throwing up in front of people - even more than throwing up itself, she hated doing it in front of others. Being seen, being heard. Such a graceless lack of control and vulnerable situation to find herself in. Thankfully, it was rare. She had a cast iron stomach that almost never got upset. Twice, she'd gotten sick as a kid; she would always lock the door to the bathroom and refuse her mother entry. Not that Jane'd be much help. This approach continued into adulthood - even someone who might actually be able to help, like Fleischman, always got locked out. She'd gotten something once when they'd just started dating - a bug or food poisoning, she'd never been sure - and she almost had to bar the door to keep him out and to stop him from smothering her with earnestly offered medical care.

"O'Connell. At least let me check you for..."

"Good _bye_ Fleischman. I am throwing up right now. Which means you have to go so you aren't watching or hearing me do it."

"I'm a _doctor_ , O'Connell. Believe me when I tell you, whatever you have going on, I'm sure I can help and that I've seen a lot worse." He tried the doorknob. "Come on."

"If you want to help, you'll go _home_. I know my body, and I am fine. Or I will be. Really. I'll call you tomorrow."

It went quiet then, and twenty minutes later, she felt well enough to open her bathroom door. She braced herself for a sudden onslaught of aggressive medical care... only to find a dozen or so saltine crackers on a plate next to a glass of ice water. A note was tucked under them. 

_At least call me tonight so I can sleep. -J_

The very thought of him hit her with a wave of nostalgia and regret...followed by a fresh wave nausea. She threw up again before sitting back on her heels, looking helplessly up at her bathroom ceiling.

She _did_ know her body, and something _was_ wrong this time. She'd felt off all week. She thought back to that time after she and Joel started getting serious, when she'd gotten that inner ear thing but assumed it was a sign from the universe that she and he were doomed. This wasn't that. This _could_ , however, be another sign she was with the wrong guy. Not that she needed one. She knew she was. 

"Mag?" As if on cue came her name and a knock. "You gonna be a lot longer? Poker game starts at 7." 

"Just go ahead, Chris," she said, trying to sound less irritated than she knew she did. "I don't feel so great. I'll see you there if I feel better later."

"'Kay," he said cheerfully. "See ya."

Of course he wouldn't stay. Yeah, she didn't want him to, but he should have asked at least. Showed some concern she was sick. Chris always took what she said at absolute face value. Joel always knew there was a deeper, hidden meaning in everything Maggie said - granted, he usually had trouble figuring out what, but at least he knew to try to look. She sighed and pushed herself to her feet, hunching forward over her sink, trying to find the energy to rinse out her mouth and wash her face. Eventually, she found it, and, once clean, she braved looking at herself. She looked pale, drained, tired. _Pregnant_ , her mind added with a whisper.

She'd been trying to avoid coming to that conclusion for ten days now, but it was getting harder and harder. She hadn't had her period in three months, but she figured it was from stopping taking birth control pills after she and Joel broke things off and he moved out. She'd even asked him about it once, after she missed the first one by three weeks, that time she visited him in Monanash.

"O'Connell, that's very normal. It'll take a couple of cycles to go back to being regular again," he'd said, hesitating before adding, "You aren't...needing to start taking anything again, are you?"

"No."

He'd sounded so hopeful, and everything between them was still so raw, she decided not to tell him about Chris. Nothing had happened yet, but it all felt pretty inevitable by then. Even now, she was still dragging her feet on getting her prescription filled anew. She and Chris were diligent about condoms, though - more her doing than his. She pretty quickly remembered that she hated being the responsible one in relationships. Then again, the last thing she needed was for Chris Stevens to knock her up. The last thing she _expected_ was for Joel Fleischman to have.

It wasn't that night she was visiting in Monanash when it happened, she was pretty sure. They'd had sex then, too, but that math wasn't right. What _did_ add up was it being that trip to the Aleutians - their last night together.

Maurice had gotten a call - an older woman in one of those hardscrabbled communities, still living off the land, like they had for generations. Her grandson was some business associate of Maurice's and was worried about her losing weight - thought it was cancer. Maurice, pretending his concern was his business machinations told Maggie to fly Joel out there to check on the woman. Maurice always had a soft heart, deep down. It wasn't cancer, thank God, Joel had determined. He suspected a simple B12 deficiency and anemia. He gave her a shot and a supply of vitamins and then, to Maggie's surprise, suggested they stay for a bit. In the _Aleutians_. In _February_.

They'd gone camping - something she never would have believed Joel would assent to, let alone suggest, as he had. He'd changed, but not _that_ much. He was trying, though, for her sake, and she knew he was building up to something important. She hoped he'd ask for everything to go back to the way it was between them before she'd ended it. She missed him so much it hurt. Instead, he told her he'd finally gotten his letter and he was going home. She'd lost him. Even so, they gave in to one last night. 

She flew him to Anchorage the next day, and he'd given her a hug and that lopsided half-smile of his at the gate. She almost told him she loved him, but knew the window had long since closed on them and that saying it would hurt much more than it helped. He kissed her, and his eyes were red when he pulled back. She waited until the gate closed to cry herself.

She dreamt of him that night - a weird and winding dream, pulling reality and her imagination together into a long, strange tale. They trekked in the snow looking for a mythical city using a map Joel had found somewhere. They'd camped, found an oasis together, found wisdom from an old World War II fighter, even encountered Adam - maybe. She even dreamed that they had that last night together, just like on their real trip, but that he'd still picked New York in the end. This time he just disappeared into the snow. She'd only come a little closer in her dream to telling him how she really felt. 

She counted through the calendar again in her mind. That was mid-February, their trip and their goodbye. It was April now, the 21st. She'd missed two periods since then so far, and was on the verge of missing a third. They'd been coming on the first of each month until she stopped taking her pills...which would have put that night squarely in the middle of exactly the right time for them to...

 _Shit_. This was the longest she'd let herself think about it since the idea first seriously occurred to her last Tuesday, and she was doing whatever the opposite of talking herself out of it could be. She bought the pregnancy test in Juneau two days ago to prove she didn't need one. Right across the street from the hotel where she and Joel stayed that time, which had to be ironic in some way. Or not. She'd always hated looking for symbolism in stories like that in high school - always felt like she was missing the point and looking for the wrong thing. _A little like you are in real life sometimes_ , came Joel's obnoxious voice, as if he were there and could hear her thoughts. He'd have laughed and laughed about her efforts to jinx this into not being a real concern - _talk about denial, O'Connell..._ She missed him terribly. 

She looked at herself again in the mirror, holding eye contact with her reflection. _The baby'd have gorgeous, expressive dark brown eyes_ , she couldn't stop herself thinking, _like him_. She shook her head hard, trying to inject a little pragmatism inside of it. "I'm just going to take the stupid test," she said out loud, to no one in particular. "Then I'll know I'm not."

 _You are_ , she thought again, _You are, you know it's his, and you feel so guilty about it, you're ignoring reality, like you always do_. She exhaled hard in response, walking defiantly into her kitchen, looking around her to make sure Chris was really gone, before pulling the box from its hiding spot deep in her knapsack. 

She unwrapped everything hastily, distracted, thinking how about she'd have to hide the used test and telltale packaging in the trash from Chris. No need to panic him when it was going to come back negative, and the less he knew about her last few dalliances with Joel, the better. She wasn't a cheater - this thing with Joel was just... complicated. Anyway, it was over.

She got quickly on with things in the bathroom, thinking about what an unfair overall lot women had in life, suffering extreme indignities like peeing on a stick when they were only half of this particular equation. She capped the test and set it on the back of the toilet before another wave of nausea hit her and she found herself on her knees in front of it again. Another indignity.

 _His baby _would_ make me sick like this_, she thought, smiling a little, _just for spite_. She knelt forward and threw up again at that moment, all at once missing Joel's over-attentiveness and being furious again with Chris for flouncing out the door without a care like he had when he knew she'd been this sick. _This is_ not _Joel's baby_ , she thought sternly. _Or anyone else's. I am_ not _pregnant._

She cleaned herself up in the sink again, and put a new shot of mouthwash in her mouth to swish around, replacing that horrible taste with concentrated minty freshness. She spit it out, took a deep breath, and picked up the test. She saw the plus sign in her mind before she even turned it over. And then she saw it for real. _Pregnant_. Of course. Well, she'd been right, at least. Some consolation.

She'd never wanted to have kids. Never ever. Rick brought it up a lot - he'd been the first guy she was with when she got to _that age_. The one where women were supposed to start feeling those urges. _Normal_ women, seemed to be the implication, not people like her. 

"C'mon, Mag," he'd say. "You don't really just want to be a bush pilot your whole life, do you?"

" _You're_ a bush pilot," she'd retort. " _I'm_ a bush pilot who owns her own plane. _And_ is a certified flight instructor. And what's wrong with being a pilot, anyway?"

"Nothing... for me. But it's different for you. You're a woman. Surely you've got that yearning, you know? Have kids. Be a mom. Do something meaningful with your life. It's what women were put here to do." God, was he an asshole sometimes. 

Mike was a more sensitive person overall, but a disaster in just about every other respect, and it never came up with him. Thank God. Chris was pretty clear - he wanted nothing to do with kids, of course - his own, at least. He liked kids okay, just not the responsibilities of raising them. Hence the condoms, even though he hated using them. Joel, though... well. They'd talked about it that once. He said he didn't want kids. She told him the same thing, but for the first time in her life, she knew she lying about it a little bit. She knew he was, too. She still didn't want to have kids. _His_ kids, though. _Their_ kids. Well, that was suddenly a different concept altogether...

 _It's like the ultimate tangible means of expressing that extreme emotion_...

She slid her hand down her abdomen slowly, feeling equal parts overjoyed, on the verge of tears, and nauseous again. The room started spinning, along with her mind's sudden twists and turns. Her first glimpse of Cicely. Flying. This house. Her last one. Her mother. Grosse Pointe. Rick. Law school. Arguing and walking down Main Street with Joel. Bruce. Ruth Anne's store. Watching Holling and Shelly bring life into this world, with Joel's help. Talking planes with Maurice. Flying with Joel terrified next to her. Folding clothes and gossiping in the laundromat. That afternoon in the barn with Joel, and the way he always looked at her when they were together like that. Helping Marilyn find her home. Mike. Taking Ed up flying his first time in the air. Her dad. Kissing Joel in that field after their first date. Chris, kissing her unexpectedly and that overwhelming feeling of desperation and resignation that followed. That night with Soapy Sanderson's wine when she first felt something for Joel. That smile he'd get when he'd come out to his waiting room and see her leaning against Marilyn's desk. That afternoon dressed as Elaine, helping him find closure. Meeting his parents. Swaying slowly together at the Brick on that rare occasion she'd get him to dance. His postcard _...state of mind...love, Joel_...

She had to tell him. She couldn't not. She marched down the hallway to her desk and started sifting through the drawers. She found his postcard. Under it, she'd tucked a business card that arrived last week. _Baird, Thalen, and Page - Park Avenue Endocrinology Associates - Dr. Joel Fleischman, MD, EDM_. She turned it over - _Stop by if you're ever in Manhattan and suffering from neoplasia_. She rolled her eyes, smiling - his stupid, nerdy sense of humor. She stuffed the card into her purse, checked to make sure her credit cards were in there, pulled one out, and headed to her phone. 


	2. Chapter 2

It was a long, long, _long_ flight, Anchorage to JFK. Almost like flying to Europe. 8 hours and 12 minutes, all told, not to mention the time change. And the redeye timing of the flight. Add to it her compounding nausea, the intensifying sense of fear, and the lingering guilt, all still swirling within her, unhelped by inedible airplane food and an uncomfortable seat, and it felt like she'd gone twice around the world by the time she arrived in the Big Apple. 

Her first call last night had been to the airline, then to Red to cover her for a week and take her to Anchorage at 5 the next morning. She spared him the lurid details behind her sudden trip. Ruth Anne she'd told; she had been Maggie's third call and the first time she told anyone what she'd just confirmed in her bathroom. Ruth Anne hadn't sounded the least bit surprised, and Maggie had no idea how to take that. They'd hung up when she heard Chris open the front door. 

He'd, of course, been quite a bit more surprised than Ruth Anne, and a little bit hurt. But nowhere near enough. Not like he should have felt if this thing between them were real. They talked, it ended, he kissed her goodbye, said it'd been a hell of a trip and that they'd always be friends. She knew he meant it, too, and felt relieved. And with that, he was gone. She slept alone that night, if you could call it sleeping, tossing and turning, punctuated by bouts of thinking she'd throw up again and sometimes following through with it. She figured she'd catch up on sleep on the plane today, but everything was too... _everything_ to sleep much. 

She was catnapping, or trying to, uncomfortably wedged against the window, when the flight attendant came through to ask everyone to put their seats up for landing. She did as she was told and blinked groggily looking out the window beside her. The frost that had formed at altitude was now melting and streaming in long droplets backwards along the window towards the tail of the plane. She smiled giddily, seeing familiar landmarks she'd never herself laid eyes on - the Empire State Building, the Pan Am Building, the Twin Towers, the Brooklyn Bridge - like a postcard come to life. Joel was somewhere down there, too, clueless about what was about to happen, maybe thinking about getting lunch. It was noon right? She did the math a second time - no, it was 11 o'clock. Either way, when he did eat, it would be the world's most balanced, most boring lunch. _Turkey on rye with a broccoli salad on the side. Tuna on wheat, hold the mayo. Chef's salad._ God, did she miss him... 

She got off the plane with no baggage, just her knapsack, and felt suddenly terrified of the city. She usually thought of herself as a worldly person - she'd traveled all over, most often alone. Hell, she'd _lived_ in Paris for 6 months. She could do big cities; it'd just been awhile. Joel's melodramatic stories about stabbings and muggings and slayings were surely just the product of his nervous persona, overactive imagination, and innate victim mentality. It'd be fine. Right? _Right_ , she told herself, feeling only about half-convinced. Anyway, crime was probably the least of her worries today. 

She stood at the taxi stand outside and felt another wave of nausea hit. _Even that idiot's hormones and mine don't get along_ , she thought, smiling ruefully. Her hand gravitated again to her abdomen, stroking it in that way pregnant women did that she always found such a cliche. Their baby was in there - hers and Joel's.

"110 East 26th," she told the cabbie in a harried voice, hoping to sound like a confident cab-rider and lifelong New Yorker. "Park Avenue," she added, watching for his reaction in the rear view mirror. That's how New Yorkers talked to cabbies, right? Quick, information-only statements.

"You from outta town," came his immediate question. Shit. So much for blending in.

"Kind of," she hedged. "Visiting my boyfriend. I'm pregnant. He doesn't know yet." She cringed. Where the hell had all _that_ come from?! Why was she oversharing like this? _O'Connell_ , she could almost hear Joel chiding, _You don't get extra points for friendliness in New York. You get marked for petty theft. This guy couldn't care less about our personal drama. And, what, you tell the_ cabbie _before you even tell_ me?? _Typical..._

"That's great, lady," came an unfriendly grumble. "Lotsa traffic at midday. Probably gonna be about forty-five."

The cab was hot and the driver made dozens of sudden, veering lane changes that wrought more rounds of nausea on her. She contemplated what it'd cost her in extra tip, losing her airline omelet all over the back of this strange-smelling cab. She tried to refocus, looking out the window at this city Joel loved so much. It sure wasn't as beautiful as it had seemed from the air - dirty, crowded, car-choked streets with high concrete walls pinning them in on both sides - walls which were lined with graffiti and crumbling in places. _He picked_ this _over me?_ She was suddenly wracked with doubt, and if she hadn't already completely embarrassed herself with the memorable, intractable story she'd just told this driver, she would have asked him to take her back to JFK. 

The city got taller and cleaner as they drove along. After a long while, they were definitely in Manhattan proper. The guy pulled abruptly to the curb next to a building with an awning stretching out from it. "Here's your stop, Mama," he cabbie said, smiling as he turned around. "Your first baby?"

Maggie smiled, despite herself. "Yeah," she said softly.

"I've got two at home myself," he said, tapping a picture taped next to his radio of two young kids smiling in the arms of a dark-haired lady. "Best thing in the world. Your guy's gonna be over the moon. Trust me." 

_See, Fleischman. Everyone's friendly if you're friendly to them_.

She handed the guy a twenty, a ten, and a five and told him to keep the change before emeging into the city, suddenly enveloped by its sights and sounds and smells. It was loud and chaotic and busy and tall and, in every possible way, the polar opposite of Cicely, Alaska. She worried again she was making a huge mistake, but she'd come this far, so she took a deep breath and made her way to the front door.


	3. Chapter 3

A doorman held the door for her and asked about her destination. She wasn't ready for the question and had completely forgotten the name of the practice. She started rummaging through her purse for Joel's card. 

"Umm..." She felt herself blushing as she pushed tubes of lip balm and loose receipts and credit cards and other extraneous nonsense around in a bag that seemed impossibly full for its small size. "A doctor here," she offered up meekly, still digging. "I can't remember the name of the..." The doorman pointed impatiently towards a concierge desk, and she made her way across a busy lobby, still digging when she walked straight into something. 

"Ow, jeez," came an irritable but familiar voice. "You wanna watch where you're going, lady, you stepped on my -"

His dark eyes locked on hers, his jaw dropped, and her body picked that instant to remind her of her delicate condition and she had to stifle the feeling of vomit coming up her throat.

"O'Connell?! What are you doing here?"

"I'm gonna throw up," she said, quickly. "Any second. Where's a bathroom?"

He snapped quickly into doctor mode and ushered her to the nearby lobby restroom, guiding her gently with his hand on her back. He was waiting with worried eyes, leaning against the wall opposite the bathroom door when she emerged, cleaned up as best as she could two minutes later. He handed her a peppermint wrapped in plastic without saying anything, put his hand back on her back, and guided her towards the elevator bay. She put the mint in her mouth and couldn't help but think that twenty-four hours ago, she'd been recalling this exact same overprotective helpfulness with nostalgia. Now she was terrified. 

"Didn't take you too long to get sick of me all over again - literally," he joked weakly when he finally spoke, minutes later as they rode the elevator up to the ninth floor. His office, she presumed. 

"Fleischman..." she started, trying hard not to smile at the familiar feeling of his name tripping once again off of her irritated lips. He looked good - was all cleaned up - shaved face, short hair, nice shoes, pressed pants, new shirt, great tie, all wrapped neatly under a crisp white lab coat with his name and credentials stitched on it, reading glasses clipped in its front pocket next to a pen. He _would_ be completely pulled together the very moment she was falling completely apart.

The elevator chimed at nine, and he gestured for her to go first. 

"Very chivalrous of you, Fleischman, but I've never been here in my life, so I'd just as soon follow you, if that's okay."

"As ever..." He rolled his eyes fondly, smiled, and walked ahead of her. "My office is just through here," he said, turning right and passing through two glass doors into a modern-looking waiting room as he gave a small wave to a receptionist who Maggie didn't even see look up. They made their way through a maze of hallways to a door with his name emblazoned on it in brass letters.

"Have a seat," he said, pulling the door shut behind him and pointing to the chair across from his at a dark wood desk with a computer monitor and keyboard on a low shelf behind it.

She sat, he sat, and they stared at each other across the top of his desk in silence for what felt like a long time. She eyed the interior of his office with curiosity. His office in Cicely had kept that motif of a bombed out building all the years he'd been there. Cozy was not his forte. This, on the other hand, was sleek and modern and obviously very carefully decorated - she wondered if by him or a professional. No, no. He had hideous taste - it had to be a decorator's work. It still smelled like new carpet and fresh paint. His voice finally penetratred the silence between them.

"I, uh, I hate to ask the obvious, O'Connell, but um..." He gestured vaguely at her. "Long time, no see. You come here for a reason or just to throw up in my lobby?"

"Well. Yes, I did," she said, smoothing her flight-rumpled shirt nervously. "That is, I _am_ here for a reason. Not just to throw up. I mean, I _did_ throw up a little downstairs, but..."

"You sick?" He frowned a little, worry flickering in his eyes. Lord help her. He was always such a worst-case catastrophizer, jumping at light speed to ludicrous conclusions. He was probably already running through some medical decision tree, right now, trying to diagnose her. She'd have to make a quick cut to the chase here.

"No. No, no," she said, her voice jumping a half-octive and sounded strangled like it got when she got really nervous. She willed herself to ignore the impulse to twist at the lock of hair over her ear. He'd be all over that. "I'm not sick."

"Then what was all that downstai-"

"I'm pregnant," she said, just blurting it out as fast as possible to end this ridiculous and uncomfortable charade. "It's yours, too," she added, just as awkwardly. "I mean, obviously, 'cause why else would I fly cross-country and come all the way here, just to tell you in person that some other guy got me... you know." He had completely frozen, staring at her. "So. Now you know."

"Wh-" He started and then paused before trying again. "What?"

"I'm pregnant. I'm going to have a baby," she said, realizing she'd now said it as many times in this exchange as she'd told anyone since she found out. He still wasn't reacting so she tried a blunter approach. " _Yours_. You knocked me up, Fleischman. That night in the tent."

His mouth finally opened just as his office door did. 

"Dr. Fleischman? Your one o'clock is waiting. Should I-"

"Cancel," he said, his eyes still locked on Maggie's. "Reschedule. See if Dr. Baird can cover it. Whatever. Something. Hold my calls, too."

"Oookay," the woman said slowly, closing the door quietly behind her. Joel kept staring at Maggie, resuming his silence. She looked at him, sitting stunned across from her in his tie and lab coat. He looked different. Not just his clothes or his terrified expression, but everything. Less wild than when she'd last seen him, of course, but still not quite like the guy she'd known for so long either. Something in between those two extremes. The wheels of her brain spun, looking for a safe conversation topic to bring him back to speaking.

"Endocrinology, huh," she started brightly. He didn't say anything. "And your office seems nice. Big. And your hair's short again. Shorter than it was the whole time you were in Cicely."

"Have you been to a doctor?" Of course, when he did finally speak, he'd gone right to practicalities.

"I'm looking at one."

He sighed and reached for his phone before punching a couple of buttons on it. "I take that as a no. ..." He leaned the handset against his face, eyes still locked on Maggie's and unreadable. "Yeah, it's Dr. Fleischman downstairs for Dr. Braha," he said into the phone.

"Fleischman, what are you do -" He put his hand up in a silent _wait_ as his response. 

"Hey, Raj. Joel. Yeah. Look, personal favor, but can I use your lab to run couple of samples and bring a patient up to use the sonogram for a few minutes? ... No, I wanna be the one do it, if that's okay... Uh, just... a friend of mine. Okay. Thanks. I owe you. Again." He hung up and looked at her again, frowning before he spoke.

"Did you take a test or something?"

"No, Fleischman, I read some tea leaves and asked my Ouija board. Of _course_ I took a test."

"How long have you known?"

" _Known_? Or suspected?"

He smiled a little. "Let me guess, there's a pretty big gap between those two dates."

"Only about a week," she said defensively, feeling irritated. "Maybe two. And what's that supposed to mean, anyway?"

He stood up and made his way around his desk nearer to her side, "Oh, just that classic O'Connell denial, rearing its head again." He touched her shoulder as he passed on his way to the door. "Sit tight, I'm gonna get a couple of things. Be back in a second. Do _not_ leave, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah." Like she was some escaped mental patient posing a flight risk.

He left, and she took her coat off and tossed it on her chair. She stood up and immediately decided to snoop through his office. She looked at his bookshelf, crammed with boring medical texts - no pictures or personal items - before she walked around to where he'd just been, sat down in his chair, and looked around his desktop.

 _You're looking for a girl's name, admit it_ , her brain whispered. _He knows now, and he's not happy. He's terrified. And it's because he's moved on with his life. He doesn't want this_. 

His desk was neatly organized, because it was him. Stacked medical journals, a prescription pad, and a day planner lay open on the surface, all of it squared up and exactly parallel to the desk's edges. No framed photos were on his desk, either, nor any post-its with local phone numbers. She eyed the planner - nothing noted in the evenings this week, even tonight - Friday night. She picked it up and started thumbing further through its pages, which was what she was doing when he reopened the door. He gave her an irritated look but didn't look surprised.

"Help yourself to my chair, by all means. And look all through my private desk, while you're at it. Glad to see you're still the nosiest person in the world." His annoyance had started to turn fond, though he tried to hide it. "I don't have a girlfriend, O'Connell," he said softly. "If that's what this little moment of sly espionage of yours was trying to uncover. I've been on one blind date since I moved back here that my mom set me up on. Nothing happened." 

"I'm not spying," she said, fully aware he knew she was lying. This was their routine, though, and she felt comforted by it. _This_ , she was used to - avoiding big things and focusing on petty disagreements. Pretending not to care. This, they were good at. "And I could care less what you do in your off-hours, anyway."

" _Couldn't_ care less, I believe is the phrase." He put a syringe and two blood vials on his desk and came around to sit against it, looking down at her. The look in his eyes was one she didn't recognize, and she'd nearly seen them all with him. "I need to draw your blood," he said.

"Why?"

"Because, O'Connell," he said in his I'm-trying-hard-to-be-patient voice, straightening her arm towards him. "Pregnancy, while one of the more common medical conditions, isn't exactly a walk in the park. A lot can go wrong. Especially with women past thirty. And especially if-"

"Are you calling me _old_?"

"No," he said, looking immediately exasperated and then quickly stifling it. "But you _are_ past thirty, are you not? Look, just let me -"

"You know what," she said, bristling and folding her arms across her chest again. "I didn't ask for this to happen. I'm the one who's pregnant, here, I don't feel well, and I'm a little freaked out about it, to be perfectly honest. So you could be a little bit nicer."

"I _am_ being nice. And anyway, join the club. I'm having a hard time processing all of this myself, okay? I haven't seen you in two months. We've been broken up for six. I kind of thought I'd never see you again. And then you just walk into the middle of my workday, rummage through my stuff, and casually tell me I'm going to be a father? It's a lot to deal with."

"I never said you were going to be a _father_ , Fleischman. I said I was _pregnant_."

He looked surprised and then his eyes narrowed slightly at her. " _Oh_. Really? Don't you think we should maybe _discuss_ this a little bit more before you decide to do something like -"

"I didn't mean _that_ ," she said, although the thought had crossed her mind several times in the last day. "I only meant that just because this kid has your genes doesn't obligate you to anything."

"Like hell it doesn't," Joel grumbled, kneeling next to her and unfolding her arms again. He wrapped a tourniquet gently around her left. "Just let me take this blood sample, okay?"

"Why? I already peed on the thingie." He cleaned the inside of her elbow with something very cold and she started. He was being gentle as always, but his touch was very dispassionate and impersonal.

"Two things, O'Connell," he said in his I'm-trying-my-hardest-now-to-be-patient-and-starting-to-fail-at-it voice as he straightened her arm. "One, there's other stuff I need to check beyond just 'pregnant' or 'not'. For two, it could have been a false positive. Or you just misreading the test. Now look over there, or you're going to see the needle." _He's hoping you're wrong. He doesn't want this_. 

"Uh-huh. I'm not an idiot. It gave you either a little minus or a little plus. I passed second grade math, and I know what I saw."

He didn't respond and drew her blood in silence, the look on his face still indecipherable as he watched his work. She tried figuring it out anyway and was down to deciding he was either angry or sad when he spoke again.

"What'd Chris say when you told him?"

Her blood went cold. "How...how do you know about me and Chris?"

"Ed and I stayed in touch," he said quietly, switching the vials and continuing to avoid eye contact. Well...on the bright side, she still knew him well enough thay she'd been dead on right with reading his face. On the significantly less cheerful flip side, he _knew_. And it obviously hurt. 

"Fleischman, it wasn't like that..."

"Hey. I could also not care less about _your_ off-hours, O'Connell." He was lying and jealous, and she felt both terrible and very, very relieved about it. He put a cotton ball and a bandaid onto her inner elbow and offered her a terse smile and a hand, pulling her out of the chair to stand. "Let's go upstairs."


	4. Chapter 4

They rode the elevator in awkward silence with two strangers up one floor to the tenth. Maggie kept sneaking sideways looks at him, but that mask of his had gone up and his face was inscrutable as he stared straight ahead at the elevator doors. At the next floor, they exited, and Joel halfheartedly waved again at another unenthusiastic receptionist before leading Maggie through a door to the back part of another medical office. 

"Raj and I went to med school together," Joel said, offering up a grudging explanation she hadn't asked for but was kind of glad to get all the same. At least he was talking to her. "He's the one who let me know about the practice downstairs needing a new endo guy. He's an OB," Joel said, leading Maggie through the door of an exam room, closing it behind them. "Which means he has the doppler equipment I don't. So." He gestured for her to sit on the exam table. She climbed awkwardly onto it.

"We broke up," she said, feeling defensive as she settled on the end of the exam table.

"Yes, I think I remember something about us doing that," he said acerbically, looking through the drawers under the countertop next to him. 

"No, not _us_. Chris and me. Last night."

She saw Joel pause and nod slowly, thinking, his back still to her so she couldn't see his face. "'Cause of this?"

"No," she said, her defensiveness not at all masked by trying to sound haughty. "I mean, this didn't _help_ , but it wasn't gonna work with us anyway."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," he said completely insincerely, pulling various items out of the drawer. "Lay back, okay?"

She sighed and laid down. He was impossible when he was really upset like this. He'd closed completely off for the moment. This happened once before, when Jed visited and they had a fight and Joel assumed the worst when he realized Jed had spent the night. It had been in her guest room, of course, but he hadn't known that and his insecurity jumped to a crazy conclusion. It took a lot to get him to hear her out that nothing had happened. She wasn't ever completely convinced he believed her, either.

She should have known the whole Chris thing would hurt him - more, sadly, than the whole Joel thing seemed to have hurt _Chris_ , even though what she'd done to poor Chris actually _was_ cheating. Then again, being with Chris _felt_ like cheating where Joel was concerned. God she was a mess. And now Joel was, too, his wall up and deflecting hard anything that was emotional. She knew talking about it more wasn't going to do a damn thing until he was past the initial shock. She'd give him a break for now and look for a better opening.

"Do you even know how to use that thing," she said, eyeing him and the odd-looking wired object in his hand. He drew the hem of her shirt up, exposing her stomach. She nearly jumped at the familiar sensation, entirely out of its normal context.

"I can't tell you how much I've missed your steadfast belief in my total lack of talent and the many opportunities you find for me to remind you about my years of medical training, O'Connell. Yes, I know what I'm doing. Um, but ...you'll have to..." he paused. "What's all this?" He gestured at the hair tie looped around the button of her jeans, through the enclosure, and back around the button again.

"I had to improvise. My pants haven't closed right for a couple of days now. They're too small across here. And don't you dare say the word 'denial' again, okay?"

"Never crossed my mind." He smiled a little again. "Whatever you've done here, _un_ do it for me, open your pants up, and pull them a little further down, okay? Just a couple of inches."

"Okay. But why?" She questioned him, even as she did as she was told and unlooped the hair tie, letting her pants fall further open. "Isn't...all of that business up here?" She put her hand two inches below her belly button and stroked her abdomen softly. He smiled at her, a different look appearing and intensifying sharply in his eyes. He put his hand on hers and slid both gently down another four inches. 

"Try here," he said, smiling more and moving their hands gently against her. Their hands lingered together and his eyes stayed on hers. She knew for certain now that he still felt something strong for her. And about this. He seemed to snap out of his daze and moved her hand to rest on the table beside her, patting it as if to apologize for letting go. Or taking it in the first place, she wasn't sure. He picked up a tube of something which he squeezed onto the thing he'd been handling a moment ago. "Now, this is gonna be a little cold. And you'll feel some pressure from the wand. Don't worry, though." 

A speaker she hadn't noticed chirped to life somewhere in the room, making odd, muffled, scratchy sounds as he moved that wand, goopy with cold stuff, around on her lower abdomen. He was pressing hard, not painfully so, but harder than the normal cursory abdominal exam he did in a physical. The strange medical equipment, the weird sensation, and the look of concentration that had taken over his face suddenly underscored the gravity of the situation, and she felt like throwing up again.

His eyes were on hers again, catious and concerned. "This doesn't hurt, does it? I have to push a little hard. I'm sorry."

"No. Just weird." She tried to lighten the conversation. "What exactly are you looking f..." The machine's noise settled into a rhythmic but still scratchy, almost squishy sound. 

"Found it," Joel said softly. His eyes shifted from his hands to her face and back again quickly. "Well, you read your test right."

She inhaled sharply. "Is that the..."

"Heartbeat. Yeah." He moved the wand around a little more and the sound disappeared and then came back a little louder. He was far too quiet for too long, and he seemed to be frowning. 

"Oh, no. What? Is something... is everything okay?"

"Yeah," he said, his voice still soft. "Everything's just perfect, O'Connell." He finally met her eyes again. She knew that look. It had been rare that she saw it, but she knew that look of his. He was about to cry. He'd been wistful and joking and fond and irritable and jealous and angry and now sad, all in the course of about fifteen minutes. And he called _her_ emotional. Not that she didn't feel suddenly overwhelmed herself, listening to that sound, with Joel next to her, hearing it, too. They were parents.

He swallowed hard and turned around abruptly, the sound disappearing. "Look, everything sounds like it should. I'll be right back, okay? I'm gonna run these blood samples through the machine, check a couple of your levels for you." He reached for the door handle.

"Oh." He stopped and leaned towards the sink. He pulled some paper towels out of the dispenser above it and handed them to her, still trying to avoid looking at her. "Sorry. Forgot. Here. So you can clean up a little."

"Fleischman?" She snagged his hand which forced him to finally meet her eye again. She'd been right. His eyes were red and glassy. She flashed back to that goodbye in the airport. She should have told him how she felt then. "I missed you." It just came tumbling out. "A _lot_."

He nodded but didn't say anything. His face reflected a thousand different emotions. 

"And breaking up like we did," she contiuned, without even knowing what the end of her sentence would be, "and that whole business with Chris...Fleischman, I... I'm..." She paused, completely unsure how to finish that thought. _I'm so sorry. It felt like cheating every time. He wasn't you_. She still couldn't bring herself to say it, though - to be any more vulnerable than she already was at this moment.

"Me, too," he said softly. "I'll be right back. Just stay here. It'll be probably 10 minutes, okay? Don't leave." He left quickly.


	5. Chapter 5

His voice was all business when he came back holding a piece of paper with printed numbers scattered all over it. "Everything looks fine. You're about nine weeks, based on your levels. Which would put your due date at November 7. And your date of conception at..."

"February 14," she said. "Am I right?" It _was_ that night, just like she'd thought.

He gave her a half smile, nodding. "And you always said I wasn't romantic..." She couldn't help but laugh a little. Was he flirting with her? 

"Oh, so you believe me now, do you?"

"O'Connell, I believed you from the moment you told me," he said, and she knew he was lying. Partially, at least. He'd broken eye contact, for one, pretending to scan the paper he was carrying. An excellent tell - he rarely lied but knew his eyes gave him away if and when he ever tried to. And while she was pretty sure he'd believed her all along about being pregnant, it had dawned on her, waiting for him to come back to the exam room with the blood work, that he might not have believed her about the date it supposedly happened. And, by extension, about the possibility - and certainty - of him being the father. Which was probably fair. He knew _now_ , though. Right?

 _And anyway, now what_ , she wondered, watching him look over the paper, lips moving as he talked quietly to himself like he did when he was thinking. _This seals it - I am, it's his, so now what do I do??_

"Baby's got a positive Rh factor," he said eventually, without looking up from his paper.

"Is that bad?"

"No. Well, kind of. You're O negative. Right? Your blood type, I mean."

"Fleischman, how would _I_ know what -?"

"Nevermind. You are. I didn't test for that today, but I know your blood type. I did test theirs, and it's A positive. Like me. So you've got an Rh incompatibility. Positive and negative don't work well together. It's just something we have to watch. You might need an injection or two later on. Not a big deal, as long as we know about it." _We_? Probably just the doctor in him, collaborative language he used when talking to patients. She'd been right about his kid and her body not getting off on the right foot, though. Was this his umemotional way of telling her he knew the baby was his?

"Hungry?" He asked her after a long pause, pulling his reading glasses off and hooking them on his shirt pocket. "I was gonna get lunch before my 1 o'clock, but someone showed up, scuffed up my new shoes, and completely changed the course of my afternoon. And then some." The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled again as they met hers. "I was thinking of taking her to lunch." He _was_ flirting. Or maybe she just wished he was. "You want to?" 

"No," she lied, pushing herself up to sit on the exam table. She was starving but too terrified to eat, fighting waves of nausea like this. He broke eye contact again, tugged her hand gently, and she slid reluctantly off the table and onto her feet. Damn. What happened?

"Well, you should really eat something anyway. You look exhausted, too. That's a long flight and the time change is awful, from there to here. Did you sleep on the plane at all?"

"Not much," she admitted. "Or the entire night before." He'd stopped flirting and had gone back to businesslike. Was it because she'd declined his sweet, shyly offered lunch or because he'd remembered again everything that happened between them and flipped that switch off? Just when she'd started to decide she really _wanted_ him to be flirting, too...

"I should take you back to your hotel, then. We could get you some food on the way, and then you can rest a little." He looked unsure and added, "I could check on you later, if that's okay. Where are you staying?" _Oh damn... that's the other thing she forgot to do_... 

She felt herself blush. "Oh. Um, well, the thing is, Fleischman..." 

"Ah," he said, grinning. "That diligent O'Connell travel planning." She mock-glared at him. "Nevermind. Stay with me, then." He'd meant it as a statement, but it had come out as a question. A very hopeful sounding one. She answered it with a smile and a nod. She'd kill to figure out what was going on between them - what he was thinking, feeling, what he wanted.

He brought her on a short walk along a crowded sidewalk to a little studio apartment on the seventh floor of a nondescript building where, he claimed, if you leaned out the window to look, you could see the edge of some trees alleged to be Central Park. She tried it, after she dutifully forced down a handful of crackers and half a banana he insisted she eat when she refused all three suggestions he'd made for a take-out lunch as they'd walked.

" _This_ is what you're calling a view, Fleischman?" She said, laughing as she stuck her head out to look. "You have to almost fall out to see anything. And what you do see isn't much."

"That's a million dollar view, O'Connell."

"You lived on a gorgeous lake with a clear view of mountains for 5 years, and you're standing here telling me this is a view? How much did you say you were paying for this place, again?" She stood taller on her tiptoes to lean further out of the window to see what else was around. The traffic and street sounds were loud and the wind seemed to race between the buildings, almost like a wind tunnel, and her hair was blowing around her face. She lifted one leg behind her to lean further forward and look down.

"You've brought me plenty of surprises already today, O'Connell, let's not add falling out a window to them," he said, sounding nervous. He moved quickly behind her and grabbed her by the belt loops on her hips. "Come back in, okay? And my rent's only eighteen hundred a month. Not that that's any of your business." _Only_. At least he had the decency to sound a little embarrassed about that. 

He'd let go but was still standing very close to her when she lowered herself down on her heels, and pulled her upper body back in through the window. She ran her fingers through her wind-tangled hair as turned around to laugh with him again. He wasn't laughing. He had a different but familiar look on his face this time. He kissed her, and she kissed him back. At least she could put to rest the flirting question finally.

And, yeah, maybe it was a bad idea, all things considered, but she had missed him so much. Anyway, this was the other thing they were great at and an easy way to avoid talking about the herd of elephants currently stampeding around the room - Chris, New York, Cicely, and, of course, their past, their present, and some kind of future now growing inside of her. They made their way to the bed in the middle of the room, clinging desperately to each other, like the last time they'd done this. The time that was supposed to have been goodbye but which had led them on a long and winding path to this one.

True to their usual roles, he at least tried to pretend to be responsible and hesitant. "Are you sure about this, O'Connell," he whispered as he kissed her neck and they fell into his bed. She noticed his feigned reluctance didn't seem to be slowing his progress in getting her clothes off. 

She laughed out of nervousness, at his breath tickling her neck, and the ridiculousness of the question, given how many times they'd done this and her current situation. "It's not like I'm gonna end up _more_ pregnant than I already am, Fleischman," she said, pulling open his belt. "Yes, I'm sure."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it..."

"Right..." Someone had to be the adult here, she supposed, and she slowed her pace a little. Okay, so she was pregnant, deliriously tired, they'd been broken up for months, she'd been going out with someone else as recently as thirty six hours ago, and Joel had moved away from her and started his life over without her. Any one of those was probably reason enough not to let things get carried away. 

Then again, a lot of those things should really be reasons for _him_ not to do this, and thinking things through thoroughly and being rational was usually _his_ job. And yet, he hadn't hesitated a second or lost a step in undressing her; he was just unfastening the last button of her shirt and kissing her neck. God, she'd forgotten how great his lips felt against her skin... But he had tried to stop them. Sort of. Maybe she was confused about his point. "So you're saying you think this is a bad idea, then?"

"No," he said, pulling her shirt open and gently kissing her along her collarbone. "I _know_ it is."

"Oh..." So much for a reconciliation. What was he doing then? "So you think we should stop?"

"God, no," he breathed against her neck, and then his lips were on hers and that was the end of their discussion. Okay, maybe neither of them would be the adult this afternoon...


	6. Chapter 6

She was very, very tired now, and feeling warm in his familiar embrace only encouraged those feelings to flourish within her. She smiled, and her eyes fluttered closed as he held her against him and trailed gentle kisses along her shoulder. That had been...well, like it always was between them. 

His fingers lazily traced along her forearm, from her elbow to her fingertips, and back again. On his fifth or sixth such journey, she trapped his fingers between hers. They clasped hands and his arm stilled. His lips did not, still moving along her skin. She felt herself preparing to giggle before it happened - before he came to that spot just where her neck met her shoulder where she always laughed. She wondered if he still knew it was coming, too, and if that had been his aim. He squeezed her hand gently when she did laugh.

"Fleischman..." she chided, still smiling. "It hasn't been _that_ long. I know you know I'm ticklish there..." It's the first either of them had spoken since this had started. The last thing they'd done before it was confirm it was probably a mistake, too. Had he changed his mind somewhere along the way? She felt his breath as he quietly chuckled in response, but he didn't say anything back for another thirty seconds. 

"O'Connell?"

"Yeah?"

"Speaking of how long..." 

"How long about what?"

"How long before you... you know..." His voice was quieter, timid almost, which he rarely was. 

"I told you already, I kind of thought I might be last week. I didn't get really worried and buy the test until Tuesday. And I told you I didn't take it until -"

"No, no... I meant, how long before you and Chris?"

Shit. He always did have the most artless timing, particularly with emotional topics. They both did - if they ever even bothered to discuss them. He started kissing along her shoulder again as if to reassure himself this was still a lighthearted conversation, and she gave his hand another squeeze. They were going to have to talk about it sometime. And how much worse could this go, really, now that he already knew about Chris?

"You mean how long after you and I broke up was it before he and I...?"

"No, I meant how was it long after I left Alaska before you two...?"

Oh. _That_ 's how much worse this could go. It didn't occur to her until just then that, while Ed may have filled him in on that the whole Chris thing happened, he might not have been as familiar with the timelines involved. Specifically, that hers had been the more accurate question of the two.

"Um...well...uh..."

Joel's lips froze mid-kiss and his arm stiffened against hers. His whole body did, in fact, and that same feeling that she'd had in his office before raced through her once again. She suddenly felt a little sick.

"O'Connell." She didn't like how he said that at all. His voice wasn't timid this time, and her name wasn't spoken as a question. It was a verdict. He'd figured it out. He dropped his hand from hers.

"Fleischman, no. At least let me explain..."

All at once, all the warmth and languor and comfortableness that had surrounded her disappeared, replaced by the cold air of his apartment. In an instant, he was on his feet and out of bed, rifling through the drawers of the dresser just beside the bed.

"I can't _believe_ you," he said finally, tersely, pulling on a pair of boxer shorts she remembered. A pair she'd slept in at his place more times than she could count. "That night in the tent. You were already -" His voice cut off and he made a vague gesture with his hands. "With him?"

" _Once_ ," she said defensively. "And it just kind of happened. We weren't seriously doing anything together when it did, either. And it wasn't ever serious between us, really, and...Fleischman..." Her voice was much more pleading, more panicky, as she said his name than last time.

 _I loved you! You don't want to hear this, but I only did what I did because I still loved_ you _! And I missed you and he was there and a friend and I was confused and lonely and just needed to feel something again. I never meant for it to be anything. Never. You left, and I know I made you, but I never wanted you to go._ Her mind raced to organize her feelings into iterable thoughts. 

"You left," was the unfortunate turn of phrase her brain settled on opening with. He seized on it right away as she sighed, frustrated with herself. She was so tired, she wasn't thinking straight, and this was just going from bad to worse. He was hastily trying to stuff his arm into a button down shirt he'd pulled from his dresser.

" _I_ left? _I_ did? Me? In addition to everything else, you also think that _this_ is _my_ fault - you and Chris? You dumped _me_ , O'Connell! A week after you told me you'd marry me, I'd like to point out. And now, not only is that somehow my fault, but now I find out you've made me an unwitting party to your infidelity with Chris!? And it's that...that _incident_ that's left me a father? And you..." 

He seemed not to know how to finish that sentence and laughed acerbically to himself as he pulled on a pair of pants, tucking the shirt tails of his half-buttoned shirt into it. He gave up on talking and focused on finishing his buttons, turning away from her. Was he leaving? Where was he going? 

The room started spinning. How'd they go from _that_ to _this_ so quickly anyway? Why did she say that? That's not at all what she meant - it came out all wrong, and now he was too hurt to listen anything else. Not that she could make any sense. She was just so tired... Tears started to prick at her eyes, and she squeezed them closed to stop them coming. The room was doing somersaults around her and she clutched at his sheets in a failed attempt to gain control over her equilibrium. Oh God, she was going to throw up again, she just knew it. Only she didn't think she had the strength to stand to go do it. 

"O'Connell." His arm was around her, and his voice was gentler now - closer to her. He helped her to her feet and into his bathroom, wrapping her in his robe as they moved.

"I'm sorry," she heard herself saying. She said it a few times after that - she couldn't remember how many, but it's all she knew that she'd said. She didn't know if she was apologizing for her sorry state, what she'd said, what she'd done, or what. Things got very blurry from there. She threw up. She knew she'd done that, at least once, maybe more than that. He stayed with her, stroking her back while she did, and she was too tired and too weak to give a damn this time.

She somehow ended up back in his bed in a t-shirt of his and a pair of boxers with a cold cloth against her forehead - his work, probably, but she didn't remember him doing it. At one point, he said something she didn't hear completely about letting her rest and going somewhere. She couldn't quite focus through her exhaustion. She couldn't swear to it, but she thought she remembered him kissing her cheek as he left. But maybe it was just wishful thinking. A fitful sleep finally overtook her, feeling guilty and wrapped in sheets that still smelled like him.

She was jarred awake by the sound of keys turning in the lock of his front door. The heavy door groaned open a bit as Maggie tried to reorient herself, eyeing the unfamiliar environs of Joel's small apartment. She had to have been asleep a couple of hours, as groggy as she felt. Now he'd come back home, and she was no closer to knowing what to say than when she'd messed this up before.

"Oof," came a woman's voice and Maggie started. Great, that's just what she needed - more witnesses to the worst day of her life. And if he didn't have a girlfriend, who in the hell was that?

Grocery bags emerged from beyond the door, appearing almost to be floating on their own, their carrier still unseen. An older woman with short, dark hair appeared soon after, carrying the bags forward toward Joel's small kitchen. His mother. Oh good lord.

At one point, Nadine adored Maggie, or at least so Joel claimed. It was doubtful she still did, particularly now that she'd broken both their engagement and also Joel's heart. Hurt him and so affected him, he'd moved off the grid to a place where his mother couldn't call him anymore. Nadine had stayed in contact with Marilyn throughout Joel's long period in Monanash, Maggie knew, but for a woman accustomed to talking to her son two or three times a week...well, suffice it to say Maggie was sure her name had lost same cachet it once had for Joel's mother.

Nadine didn't seem to notice she wasn't alone in the apartment. Maggie watched from Joel's pillow as she began unloading food from the grocery bags and into his cabinets. Eventually, what was happening dawned on her and she couldn't stop a bemused smile from forming. _He's so easily babied - he can't shop for his own damn groceries?_

Only a few moments more passed before the inevitable happened and their eyes met. Nadine didn't seem all that shocked at seeing someone unexpectedly - she merely paused her unloading and held Maggie's eye.

"Hello." She finally spoke; her voice was friendly but uncomfortable-sounding and carried a hint of accusation. _She thinks I'm some one night stand of her son's. Wonderful. As if this weren't awkward enough and we weren't already very much on the wrong foot._

"Mrs. Fleischman, I -"

"Maggie."

"Yeah." Okay, maybe she _did_ remember her after all. They'd only met twice - on the flight from and then to Anchorage - when they'd visited last summer. Joel really wanted her to _really_ meet them, have dinner, all of that, but Maggie resisted. They weren't dating then, only trending that way, and Maggie felt awkward. Plus, she wouldn't know what to do with a warm and functional family like Joel's. More than anything, though, deep inside she knew she didn't want his mother to get to know her, see what a screw-up she really was with men, and warn her son off. Not that Nadine would have been wrong to have done that, in retrospect.

She held Maggie’s eye contact for a long while before wordlessly turning her attention back to the grocery bags, choosily picking through them, removing some items but leaving others. After a long silence, she spoke again.

"Let me just get the last of this cold stuff into his freezer before it melts. And I know what you're thinking, I do, and you're right. But he's had such a hard time adjusting and is so busy at work, and it's been so long since I've had him this close at hand. I miss being able to take of of him and so..." She shrugged as if that's all the ending to that thought that she could muster. "I might as well put everything away. He'll just leave it in these bags if I don't."

On the whole, Nadine seemed much more concerned with refilling Joel's refrigerator than with the woman laying fifteen feet in front of her in her son's bed, their clothes scattered across the foot of it. She put the items efficiently into his freezer and fridge, folded and stowed the paper bags, and wiped the counter before walking around to sit on Joel's couch. It felt like an eternity before she spoke again. 

"He didn't mention you'd be coming," she said simply, when she broke her silence. There were a thousand questions embedded in her tone. 

"He didn't know; I just flew in this morning," was all Maggie could muster by way of explanation. _You're a grandmother_ , she thought to herself, _and you have no idea. Which is probably good, considering your son hates me right now.._.

Silence filled the room again, and Maggie tried to decipher Nadine's expression. She and Joel had the same expressive eyes, but hers were much more guarded, and a lot harder to read - a layer of maturity Joel still lacked obscured them.

"I'm so sorry," Maggie said at last, pushing herself to sit up and feeling anything but dignified. "I know what this must look like and what you probably think about me, about him and me - _he and I_ , I mean - what he's told you about what happened between us... and you're completely right about all of it, and now I'm suddenly here and -" Shit. She couldn't make herself make sense today.

His mother smiled at her. She had his smile, too - that practiced, reserved one he'd use when he was still figuring out what he thought about something. "He just left you here alone like this in his apartment? He's not much of a host."

"No. Well, yes. I mean, no, he was here before. With me. I mean, not like..." She couldn't stop her eyes from quickly dropping to the clothes that had been tossed across the foot of the bed, and she felt herself flush. "...The thing is, I was really jetlagged, and he had to go back in to work." She paused. "I'm sorry," she added almost automatically. 

"So you've said. Twice." She smiled a little more, a warmer and more gentle smile. "You don't need to keep saying it. I can't say I know much about this, but I'm sure my son isn't entirely blameless. No matter what he might claim."

Maggie smiled despite herself. "What has he said?"

"Very little. You know him - very secretive, especially about things like this. I believe the last thing I heard from him was that you two were getting married. When he showed up on my doorstep last month, I inferred that might not be the case any longer." She paused. "Now, what _Marilyn_ told me was quite a bit more than that."

Oh _God_ , how many people had been discussing she and Joel, she wondered. Joel wouldn't have talked to Marilyn about any of this - he afraid of Marilyn, for one, and far too private. Hell, he barely even talked to Maggie about their relationship - hence the situation they found themselves in now. But Marilyn always seemed to know everything without needing to be told. Did she know about Chris, too? Or about Maggie's hastily-taken journey here and the reason behind it? Nadine was smiling at her, so surely his mother didn't yet know all the seedy details at work here.

"And at the risk of irritating him greatly with my meddling, why don't I guess at what I think happened and you tell me where I go wrong?"

Maggie pulled her legs in to criss cross in front of her as she sat the rest of the way up. He wouldn't like this one bit, the two of them talking about something he clearly chose to keep from his mother, but Nadine had such a warm and comforting energy, Maggie couldn't help but want to anyway.

"I know he proposed," his mother continued, "and I know, sometime after that but before he arrived here, he developed a sudden interest in getting back to nature. I take it something happened between those two moments."

"We broke up," Maggie said, before feeling guilty, recalling her conversation with Joel before, and adding, "I broke up with him, to be exact." Nadine nodded but said nothing, so Maggie continued. "He took it really hard. He went up to Monanash on a house call once and just... decided not to come back."

"Marilyn told me about where he'd moved. I have trouble picturing Joel living like she described," she said, smiling fondly, "but she swears it's true. Right down to the no electricity."

"He adjusted pretty well," Maggie said, picturing Joel as she last saw him, hair wild and long, in tattered clothes, his face bearded and windwhipped. "For him, anyway. But it really was my fault - we decided to get married and he moved in and then...and then I don't know what happened."

"Joel can sometimes be someone who isn't very easy to live with," Nadine said with a wry smile. "Take it from someone who did for 18 years."

"No, no, no, this wasn't his fault. Really. It was me. I always knew he'd never stay, and he knew I was never going to move here, but then all of a sudden we were getting married and..." She trailed off. Why was she telling his mom this? Why hadn't she ever told him? "He hates Alaska. He's dreamed of moving back here since the day he set foot there. And I didn't want to be the reason he stayed. I was living with someone who was miserable because of me. So I let him go. _Made_ him go."

Nadine nodded, looking curiously at Maggie. The silence between them grew to fill the room - Maggie could almost feel it, like a presence pressing down on her from above. She could almost hear the question - _So why have you come here to mess up his life again?_

"I didn't come here to make it worse," Maggie blurted, feeling guiltier by the second. "I just..." _got pregnant and now I've doubled down on exactly what I never wanted from him - he feels stuck with me forever_ "...needed to see him." 

Nadine didn't say anything again but her eyebrows raised ever so slightly. Maggie’s imagination immediately set to running wild. _She set him up on a blind date already; he told you that himself. She's probably furious that you've come and derailed his life and undone whatever work he's done to get past this. And she still has no idea about the other big revelation that's coming and how furious she ought to really be._ The heaviness hanging in the room pushed down on her and made things start to spin, just like before when Joel was here. Oh God.

"Mrs. Fleischman, I'm sorry, but," Maggie said hastily, pushing herself up and out of Joel's bed, grasping for an explanation . "I really don't feel well. It's this jetlag, I think. If you could excuse me for a second..." 

She shot into Joel's bathroom and threw up again. How there was anything left still to throw up, she had no idea. She'd kept almost nothing down for two days now. As soon as she finished, the vertigo slowed and she washed her face and rinsed her mouth again, swigging directly from the bottle of mouthwash by his sink. He used to have a fit when he saw her do that, or use his toothbrush.

She noticed something she hadn't the last time she'd done this. Hanging from the knob on his medicine cabinet was a keychain - one she'd never seen before. It was a little silver plane - a fixed wing single engine prop plane just like hers. It stood in stark contrast to an apartment totally devoid of decor or knickknacks. She tapped it with her finger and watched it swing gently along the cabinets face. 

As she contemplated its presence, a gentle knock came. She sighed and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Pale, exhausted, disheveled. She patted her hair, before deciding she looked awful and very little would change that at this point. She opened the door and his mother was there, a concerned look on her face and a glass of water in her hand. Like mother, like son. She helped Maggie back to Joel's bed.

"Drink a little of that water, it'd do you good. Really."

"No," Maggie said, trying both to be polite and to keep from feeling like throwing up again. "I really don't think I can keep anything down. I haven't for two days. Even water. Thank you for getting it though."

His mother smiled at her again and perched herself on the edge of the bed and helped Maggie pull the covers up to her shoulders as she settled in. "In the early days with Joel, I was just like this - absolutely miserable. It doesn't last forever, I promise."

She was very caring, very gentle. Maggie could see where Joel got his healer's disposition from, at least. God, here was this woman whose son had gone through so much - a lot of it her doing - and she was still being so kind to the person who'd caused most of it. Nadine's eyes had a sudden twinkle to them that, if she were Joel, would mean he was about to tease her about something. 

"I don't know, I think he's really mad at me," she said in response. "He can hold a grudge like no one on on earth."

"He can. But that's not what I meant. Let me say it another way," Nadine smiled more broadly. " _Morning sickness_ tends to run in our family. But it only lasts for a few weeks."

 _Oh shit_. How'd she figure that out? What if Marilyn knew? What if everyone did?

"Now don't try denying it. Your being sick sealed it, but I had my suspicions. A woman who's both as glowing and as pallid as you are at the same time is a dead giveaway. As is your sudden need to see him again, in person. And that you said you were sick before you even flew here today. From 'jetlag"." And _there_ was the rest of her resemblance to Joel. Always thinking, always gathering data and connecting dots, even when he didn't look like he was. Damn. 

"I'm so sorry," Maggie said. At this point, she might as well just get that tattooed across her face, for as often as she kept saying it. "I promise you he hasn't been keeping this from you or anything like that; I only told him today. And I only knew yesterday. We haven't talked in weeks. The truth is, after we broke up, I... I kind of started seeing someone else. A friend of ours. Then I realized _this_ had happened...was happening...was his... and then I flew here today. He's furious with me. And I'm sure he doesn't want you to find out like this. And I'm even more sure this isn't the way you - or he - pictured this happening for him. I'm just so sor -"

"That's four times now, which is plenty," Nadine tsked, patting Maggie's hand again before standing up. "If anyone should be apologizing, it's him for leaving you here in this state. He's too old for temper tantrums. I should let you rest. And leave before he gets back. He would be beside himself if he knew I knew about this. And had talked to you. But you should know he doesn't hate Alaska. He's very unhappy here. Because he misses you terribly. And that town."

Maggie watched her pick up her purse from the kitchen. "Did he tell you that?"

" _Would_ he have? He's far too private. But a mother knows these things. As you'll see..." She smiled once more as she opened Joel's front door. "Congratulations. I couldn't be happier for both of you. But I will pretend to be surprised when he does decide to tell me later. You have my word on that. Just don't let him wait too long. I might burst." 

With that, she left. Maggie closed her eyes again, exhausted, wondering what other awkwardness the day could possibly still have in store for her. At least his mom didn't hate her - now, her son on the other hand... She drifted off again and woke up later when she felt the bed move next to her. It was dark outside, so a lot more time must have passed. 

Joel climbed beneath the covers with her, still dressed except for his shoes, and his arms moved around her as he kissed the back of her head. Was he just going to forget about everything? Chris? What she'd done? Them? Being mad? Not that she didn't want him here, or doing this, but that didn't seem healthy. Not that either of them could claim healthy in this relationship... 

"Where'd you go?"

"Oh, you know...to get a couple of things, go explain myself at work." For hours and hours? "And I took a walk..." 

"For how long?"

"Oh from here to 126th and back. Couple of hours..."

"So what'd you tell people at work?"

"Family emergency," he said. "Figured it was both the least and also _most_ descriptive thing I could say, under the circumstances." He dropped his hand down to gently stroke her abdomen. "On which subject, how are you two feeling?"

She smiled, despite everything, at his question. _You two_. She was having their baby. Every time she re-remembered that, it got a little easier to believe. "Well, I don't feel sick when I'm sleeping. But I do when I'm not. So I just slept." _Except when your mom showed up and I told her everything_. 

"Were you sick while I was gone?"

"Maybe. Why?"

"Because I'm gonna give you a shot. Well, two shots, actually."

"Why?"

" _Because_ , O'Connell. You've got to be able to eat something. This is very safe stuff - just a B-6 booster and some anti-nausea medication. I'm not going to load the mother of my child up with Thalidomide or anything like that. Anyway, it's this or a glucose IV - your choice." 

"You're being really bossy, Fleischman," she said, smiling in relief at the normalcy as she stretched and settled further back against him. He hugged her tighter. "You're not going to do this the whole time I'm pregnant, are you?" _I hope you know I want the answer to be yes_.

He kissed her shoulder. She felt enveloped by that happy, warm feeling again and relaxed back against him. They'd come full circle from earlier this afternoon, since they'd been right here, doing exactly this, when their argument started. It was far too much like both of them to just pretend it hadn't happened, too. They were such cowards. How could they possibly hope to raise a child together if they couldn't even talk about whether that's what they wanted to do? She worked up all the courage she had and got the words _we need to talk_ all the way to the tip of her tongue when he spoke first.

"Look, I want to sit you up check your pulse and your blood pressure. Then I'm gonna give you these two shots." She sighed - more deflection to the neutral topic of medical care. "They'll take about an hour to work, which should give us time to talk. I know you don't want to, and I really don't either, but I think we need to." She felt him swallow nervously. "Because I'm sorry. And because it's long past time for me to tell you that I'm in love with you. And that this is the best thing that's ever happened to me, regardless of my initial reaction. I miss you. I want to come home. And then after we talk and you feel well enough to eat, I'm gonna take you to dinner and ask you to marry me again. Okay?"


	7. Chapter 7

"Maurice is having a party the weekend we get back," Maggie said, lounging on Joel's couch, one leg bent and the other slung up atop pillows that lined its back. She was watching him pack a suitcase over the top of a magazine she was halfheartedly looking through. It was his job to alleviate her boredom, but he seemed unaware of that.

"Yeah? Am I invited, or did you hide my invitation from me again?"

"Once, did that happen! And I didn't 'hide' it. It got ...lost. Or something."

"Keep telling yourself that, O'Connell..."

"It did!" _Well, maybe_ , she thought to herself. That was right after Mike, after all, and she'd never been completely sure if it was mere forgetfulness or actual malice on her part. Subconscious malice, if anything, but she wasn't ever as convinced of her innocence as she usually tried to sound. 

"And why would anyone invite you anyway?" She continued. "You moved away, as far as they know. Ruth Anne told me the invitations all said each person could bring a guest, though," she said, tossing the magazine onto the coffee table beside her. "So if you be good, I might consider bringing you. Surprise everyone. You have to announce you're back somehow." He kept stacking nearly folded clothes into his bag without a response. She sighed loudly. "You done packing yet? I'm bored."

"I know." She saw his grin from across the room, but he didn't look up from his work. "You've sighed at me three times already. I know what you're getting at with that. You are the only person above the age of ten who has such a short attention span that she routinely ends up bored." He paused to consider how to fit the next stack into his bag. "So she's still the only one who knows? Ruth Anne, I mean."

"About the baby? Yeah. Well, her..." Maggie hesitated before adding, "and Chris." She watched his reaction when she said Chris' name and gave him credit for only making a little bit of a face. She had no doubt she could pretty easily go back to being friends with Chris - eventually. As for Joel, well, it'd probably be awhile. He held grudges like no one she knew. Not that any of this was Chris' fault. "But only she knows about you coming back. Neither of them will say anything."

"So what's Maurice celebrating this time?" Joel said, leaving the thorny subject abruptly. Probably a smart idea. "His ongoing largesse?" He seemed to finish packing the bag. He was down to just a handful of items and one last suitcase now. They shipped everything else to her place yesterday. _Their_ place. They would beat all of it back there, too; today was their last day in New York. They had an early flight tomorrow morning - Friday. One week to the day after she showed up and everything changed between them. Changed back. Got fixed. Or started to.

"Something like that. He's opening that resort he always said he would. Wants to show it off. You know Maurice..."

"I was gone for two months, and Maurice opened a whole damn resort already?" Joel looked exasperated but amused as he zipped the suitcase closed and put it alongside the other beside his almost-empty dresser. Then, he headed towards Maggie with a wry, fond smile.

"Well, just the main lodge. The rest of it is..." She frowned at Joel as he nudged her leg down from its perch and maneuvered to sit underneath it and beside her.

"...one of his pipe dreams?"

"I'd have been nice said 'a latter stage of his project'. But, yeah, probably." Maggie plopped her other foot in his lap, and he stroked his fingers along it. She jumped from the ticklish sensation. "Ruth Anne said he got a couple of suspicious packages lately...including one from a diamond wholesaler." 

Joel rolled his eyes. "I didn't know she was scrutinizing the return addresses on everyone's mail like that. No wonder you two get along. She might be nosier, even, than you are. Maybe. That's a really high bar."

She didn't take the bait. If he wanted to bicker, he needed to give her some better incentive than that. "She thinks he's going to propose to Barbara this weekend."

"So _that's_ the real reason for this party. I hope she says yes, then, for his sake." He'd stopped moving his fingers along her foot, so she wiggled her toes against his hands and looked at him hopefully. "You're really milking this pregnancy thing for all it's worth, aren't you?" Despite his protest, he indulged her, hiding a smile.

They'd settled into what turned out to be a very comfortable routine the last few days. Every day, he'd gotten up and gone to work, leaving her and her jetlag and nausea behind in his warm bed with a kiss. He brought lunch back midday, and they ate together, after which he went back to work while she left to explore the city. The shots helped, and her nausea seemed to improve in the afternoons. He promised her it wouldn't last much longer, either. Two more weeks would mark the start of the second trimester - the easy trimester, he claimed. Which, of course, his mother had already told her...

As she explored it, New York had grown on her a little - not enough that she'd want to live here, but she could see some of the charm now. She'd gone to a matinee on Broadway today for next to nothing in a gorgeous theater with great acoustics and a passionate, talented cast. She'd walked the Met yesterday and MOMA the day before that. She'd walked down to the Financial District, looped through Central Park, and by and through all the other places she felt she had to see. He'd taken her out for two very nice dinners, after the one that first night, and they'd even eaten a cozy meal with his parents Sunday night in the home he'd grown up in. And told them. 

Nadine feigned surprise, like she'd promised. Even Joel had thought it odd how nonplussed by the shock of their news - she seemed more overjoyed than anything, in fact, and was already planning her next visit to Alaska later this summer. And next spring, of course, to see the baby, an idea Maggie still couldn't quite wrap her mind around. His dad was quite a bit less talkative than his wife and son but seemed happy about the news in his own way. He gave Joel a handshake and a fatherly hug as they left. On the whole, they were both far more easygoing about the upheaval than she'd figured; maybe they'd known on some level that Joel would always find his way back to Alaska. She had yet to tell her own mother. That was certain to go much worse than with Joel's parents. They'd get to practice telling a broader and much more easiergoing audience at Maurice's party, too, it seemed. Maurice'd be duly pissed to have his thunder stolen, too. She couldn't wait.

His hands were doing wonderful things to her feet at the moment. So wonderful, she also suddenly wanted something more from him than an innocent foot massage. Stupid hormones had her all over the place anymore, veering quickly from one extreme to another. She tried to keep her mind on a more practical track.

"So. Dr. Baird find a replacement for you yet?" He'd given notice Monday morning. He hadn't known what, exactly, to say, going into the conversation. _I accidentally got my ex-fiancee pregnant, so I'm moving back to Alaska now, which is good because I figured out I didn't really want to leave and we realized we shouldn't have ever broken up in the first place anyway, only firearms kept discharging when we had sex and we took it as a bad sign,_ wasn't exactly something she could picture him saying. Whatever he'd said, there seemed to be no hard feelings. She felt like she should confirm that point again, with today being his last day at work.

"No. They'll find someone, though. Doctors aren't exactly in short supply in this city." He chuckled a little. "Nor in Cicely. At least for now." They had another problem - his old job was currently occupied.

"You ever meet Dr. Capra?"

"Once. In a dream. We played golf together. He was pretty good. I was _better_ , of course... I'm a better doctor, too..."

"Uh huh." His arrogance was forever intact, despite the mellowing he'd done in Monanash. Charming to her still, too, somehow, because she was crazy. "And what are you going to do if he doesn't want to go back to L.A.?"

"I doubt it takes much arm-twisting. His wife hates Cicely."

"You got all that from a dream, did you?"

"You learn a lot dreaming, O'Connell...I sure did about you." He gave her a penetrating look as his massage had slowly crept up from her feet to her lower legs now. It felt nice, but it sure didn't help make that _other_ impulse she had go away. She wished he were suddenly telepathic.

"There's a fine line between dreaming and fantasizing, Fleischman..." He didn't react. Damn. She was being fairly obvious, too.

"If I _don't_ get my job back, though," he started back in as he switched from her left to her right leg, "neither you nor I will have any discernable source of income."

"Why? I can still fly."

"For maybe another two months. _Maybe_."

"I will fly until I can't. Which will be right before I have this baby." 

"No," he gave her a chiding look.

"Yes."

" _No_. No doctor on earth will okay you flying over an unpopulated area with no hospital in sight after about five months. Least of all the father." He gave her a hopeful smile. "Who will be your husband by then?"

"Will you lay off?" She poked him playfully in the chest with her toes. He trapped her foot against his chest. "I said yes. I meant it. But it's only been a week. Not even that. We'll get married. Eventually. But for sure, this time. Promise." He had asked her Friday night, just like he said he would. And then he promised he'd do a better, more traditional job sometime when she didn't expect it. Even so, he seemed to reconfirm her answer a few times a day, as if to make still certain that it was yes.

"I've been engaged three times now and never married, so I'll believe it when I see it." He leaned down and kissed the ankle of the foot he'd trapped, tossed her a very different, very _interesting_ look, and then kissed her a little higher up. Maybe they _were_ on the same wavelength after all. Only now that he wanted this, she'd have to switch sides and work twice as hard as normal at pretending she was uninterested. It was way more fun when they were pretending to disagree.

"It's a good thing you're done living alone. You have the absolute worst sense of decor I've ever seen."

"I've noticed you hate my apartment." He kissed slowly up her shin while pretending to be engaged in their otherwise mundane conversation. She bent her knee back towards her, pulling it further from his reach to make him have to work for it.

"Hate's a strong word, Fleischman," she said as she tried and failed to control the waver in her voice as he dutifully followed her leg and moved to crawl above her. This really wasn't a fair fight, her saddled with strong and unfamiliar hormones like she was. "I will say the view is lacking. It's tiny, too. There's hardly room for the, what, six pieces of furniture you have. There's no color or art or anything on the walls. Your couch is gray your bedspread is gray. Your sheets are gray. This looks like either the world's most boring hotel room or most exciting prison cell, I can't decide which."

"Well, I always did appreciate your refreshingly unfiltered feedback, O'Connell. And I'm absolutely devastated by what you think about my sense of design and taste."

He ran his hands reverently along the backs of her legs as he moved. She'd hardly ever worn shorts around him, warm clothes and layers being such a natural part Alaska's climate, but she made a mental note to 'borrow' his boxers more often in the future. 

"You sure we're gonna last more than five days living together this time?" He sounded much more timid and unsure than before. They'd been through a lot. It'd be awhile before everything was all the way back to right with them, she knew.

"We've done it here for the last six." She ruffled his hair gently. "So yes, I'm sure. I think."

"Okay." He seemed to feel better, and he slowed his pace as he reached the halfway point of his journey. He paused to draw the palm of his hand gently back and forth across her middle. She could see something there now, if she really looked - she still wasn't obviously pregnant, but there was definitely something at work down there. She wondered if anyone else could see it. If he did. 

She watched him smile, watching his hand move slowly back and forth across her skin - it was a sweet, gentle gesture and, in any other frame of mind, it might make her a little emotional. Right _now_ , though? Well, she thought they'd had other plans. And here he'd gotten distracted.

"Okay, okay," she said, sounding impatient. "Enough of that. It seemed like you were in the middle of something before you got sidetracked. So you wanna get back to that?"

His eyes met hers, bemused and with a sparkle that reassured he was still mentally on track. "You're lucky nosy, impatient, bossy, easily bored women are such a turn on for me, O'Connell." He kissed to within range of her lips and leaned down to kiss them. She turned her head quickly so he'd miss.

"Was that a _smart_ thing to say just then, Fleischman?"

"Is it going to cause us to have a fight?" He murmured into her hair as his hands slid beneath her shirt.

"You being a jerk? Doesn't it usually?"

"Then, yes," he said, finding her lips again, successfully this time. "It was very smart."

"We're going to be late for dinner now," came her final, half-hearted protest. The jig was pretty near up on this. "Our last night here, too."

"I'll take you out to the Brick on Saturday night and make up for it."

"I'm going to Maurice's party," she reminded him. Alaska felt both like a million miles away and in their immediate future, all at the same time.

"Yeah? You have a date lined up for that?"

"I might know a guy..."


	8. Chapter 8

"O'Connell?" She smiled. The novelty of being in bed next to him again still hadn't worn off. She was having trouble sleeping anyway, despite being back in her own familiar bed. Back home in Cicely. They were trying to keep his return a secret, at least until tomorrow night, so they went straight to her house. _Their_ house. Soon enough at least. Only there was so much still to do to get ready.

They'd gotten back midday, which was, of course, already nighttime in New York. She'd gotten kind of used to New York time, but not all the way used to it during her short stay there, particularly because she tried to out-sleep her morning sickness while Joel went to work. She certainly wasn't enough used to it to be tired at 8 pm Alaska time, which it was right now. And certainly not at 6 pm Alaska time, when he'd been tired and they'd laid down, just after an early dinner.

Getting ready for bed had been an unexpected minefield. She'd left for New York in a hurry and had tidied up a little like she always did before traveling - changed her sheets and towels, that sort of thing. But not what she'd have done if she knew he'd be coming back with her. Joel had seen Chris' toothbrush in her bathroom and things got uncomfortable. He didn't say anything, but she saw his face in the mirror when he saw it. Then, they'd gone to get in bed. She'd always slept on the left with Joel but felt weird and so switched to the right with Chris. Out of habit, she walked to the right side and pulled back the covers just as Joel appeared behind her.

"Oh. Uh, you want to switch sides or...?"

"Oh! No. No, sorry, I just forgot - you can sleep there," she said, moving to get into the other side of the bed. "Force of habit, he was usually on the other..." _Shit_. "Nevermind."

"Oh. Right," he said softly. _Perfect - way to re-remind him someone else was sleeping here a week ago_.

"Fleischman... I'm... It was only a few weeks. And he really didn't stay here _that_ often, I mean..."

"It's okay... let's just go to bed. I'm fine." _Except he's not. And you keep inadvertently reigniting this insecurity of his_.

They mutually seemed to agree not to discuss it any longer, each feigned tiredness, and turned out the light. They just wanted things back to normal. Even though it was going to take awhile. His breathing had gotten even and quiet fairly quickly, so she figured he'd fallen asleep at least an hour ago. Guess not.

"O'Connell?" He said her name again, quietly. 

"Hmmm?" 

"You sleeping okay?"

"I _was_ ," she lied, "Until you started talking to me." Playing at fighting was their comfort zone. He took to it immediately.

"Oh you were _not_ ," he said, rolling over to wrap his arms around her. "I remember your nocturnal habits well enough. You get in bed and roll over and over and over again. You've done this every time I've ever slept next to you, and you've been doing it since the moment we laid down. C'mere." He nuzzled her neck and kissed her. "I guess I'll have to hold you still so I can finally get some sleep. It's hard to believe I thought I missed this..."

She snuggled back against him in response and let him have the final word this time, in light of the whole toothbrush debacle. His hand slipped down her midsection and stroked her gently, right where this morning she'd seen him notice her small bump. His hands gravitated there often. They still hadn't talked much about the baby - they'd talked about everything else, at least the short term stuff - what to do about them, packing, getting him back here. Not about the fact that they were about to become family - parents - and welcome a life into this world together. These gentle touches of his were as close as they'd come so far.

"Can I ask you something?" Uh oh. Here it came. He sounded serious. The Chris thing still weighed heavily, she was sure, and she kept being afraid he'd come to his senses and realize he wanted no part of this. Not only hadn't they talked in any serious way about the baby, they still hadn't figured out what to do about his job, about telling everyone what had happened and why he was back - anything past simply getting here. Then there was marriage. She absolutely intended to marry him, she really did, but she needed a little more time. It wasn't cold feet either. One afternoon in New York, she'd gone and figured out what she needed to do, but it was going to take awhile. And telling him she needed time without telling him why would make him think she still wasn't ready. Which she _wasn't_ , but not for the reasons he'd think if she said it. He nudged her out of her internal fretting.

"What'd you fall asleep on me, O'Connell?"

"No, I'm still here," she said, trying for a joke, hoping they weren't about to get into anything heavy. "What's wrong, Fleischman? Need me to check the closet for monsters or something?" What was he about to ask?

 _How could you...and with Chris, of all people? Are you really going to marry me this time? Or are you going to break my heart a third time? What are we going to do with a baby? How did I let you talk me into walking away from my life like this? Why did I do this to myself again?_ There were a thousand questions he'd be right to ask right now, and she braced for the worst.

"What made you take up flying?"

"Huh?" That had not been on her radar as the thing on the tip of his tongue. 

"Flying. Planes, O'Connell. You know, like that little death trap of yours you reacquainted me with today?"

"Are you asking me how I learned to fly? Same as anyone does. I had to get a PPL - sorry, private pilot's license - first, log a ton of hours, and then I had to take a bunch of written tests to get my commercial-"

"No," he kissed her cheek. "I was asking you _why_ you learned to fly. I want to know what made a rich girl from suburban Michigan think she'd want to do something crazy like that."

"It's not story hour at the kindergarten, Fleischman. I thought we were trying to get some sleep."

"C'mon. I've known you for six years. We're getting married. Supposedly."

"We _will_. Eventually. I promise."

"Uh huh. Back to flying. I don't even know why you do what you do still." He stroked her abdomen again. "Plus, I gotta know if your crazy behavior is learned or genetic - whether this kid of ours has any kind of a chance at being normal." _Our kid_. She smiled and relaxed a little.

"Well... I really haven't ever told you this? About Dave and all of that?"

"That's the guy with the awful book, right? Who you followed out here? Froze to a glacier?"

"Why does everyone assume his book was awful? It wasn't _that_ bad."

"Your dad read it. He told me it was terrible."

"It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible. Dad just hated Dave. That's why he hated his book. He always used to tell me if I stuck with Dave, I'd..." She laughed a little to herself, remembering.

"You'd what?"

"Just that I'd end up barefoot and pregnant in the middle of nowhere Alaska."

Joel chuckled into her hair and touched the soles of her sockless feet with the toes of his. "Your dad went three for three, only with an Ivy League doctor, not a philosophy major. Sounds like it was less Dave and more fate."

"You don't believe in fate."

"You're right. You gonna tell your dad ever?" He drew his palm slowly across her middle again. "About this?" _That I ended up unmarried and pregnant, just like he worried I would? No, I'm saving that particular conversation for another day_.

"Yeah. I mean, eventually, I will..."

"You keep saying the word 'eventually'..."

"Yeah, I know. I mean it, though..." _He doesn't believe you..._ "So, flying..." She got the conversation back on a lighter track quickly. "I really haven't told you this story?"

"No. Never. You told me about Dave. But you've never told me how you decided you wanted to fly." He pulled her close, and she told him how she and Dave met at Michigan, at a law school party the spring term of her second semester. His roommate was a 2L who was a friend of a friend. Dave was a grad student in philosophy. Another reason her dad hated him. _Might as well get a PhD in homelessness_ , she could still hear him saying. They'd been going out 2 months when he talked her into following through with dropping out of law school by telling her to come along to Alaska with him. Strike two for Dave with her dad. He was writing a book about ...oh who the hell even knew. Something about self-reflection and determinism and whatever else he filled 200 pages with to justify hiking and camping for 6 weeks in the Chugach Mountains.

It was beautiful. She could say that about it. She never got down that way anymore, near Anchorage, where she'd lived when she first moved to the state in '86. The mountains there were gorgeous. Nothing like Michigan. They lived outside all summer, camping and making weekly runs to the grocery store for staples. He'd settle in somewhere to scribble in his notebook, and she'd hike. When fall came, he'd finished the book and was supposed to be looking for work in Anchorage. She knew he wasn't trying terribly hard, though. _She_ had been, but Alaska outside of cruise ship season was a tough place to find a decent job. Her parents still sent checks, though, and making a temporary, part-time waitressing or phone-answering gig into a permanent career felt stifling. Things with Dave weren't going all that hot, either. He was definitely _not_ the one. Even if he was the only one she knew for thousands of miles.

September came and she and Dave were set for two more weeks of camping near Portage Glacier. It was at this point it became clear to her parents that law school wasn't going to happen. Her dad told her he wasn't sending any more money. She was being cut off. He reminded her she still had the rest of her law school tuition money, and said she should consider very strongly giving up on this and using the money for its intended purpose. And she did, picturing herself dragging back home with her tail between her legs, and reenrolling, like a good little girl. She still took off for the glacier.

"And that glacier trip was..."

"The one that got him," she suddenly pictured a very young and very drunk Joel, sitting opposite her at the Brick - the last time she'd him told this part of the story. It didn't seem that long ago... "Yeah. We were up there two days, and then _that_ happened. I managed to find someone headed down the mountain, and they sent a helicopter back up. Not that... I mean, he definitely _was_ already by the time I found him. But anyway, they flew us both into Anchorage, to a hospital. The pilot sat and talked to me for a long while. I'm pretty sure he felt horrible for me. I mean, I was crying and all of that, and I didn't know anybody in Anchorage to call. I couldn't really call my parents. Anyway, so eventually, he and I - Glen, that is - we-"

"Wait. _That's_ how you met Glen? He was the life flight pilot that picked up Dave's _body_?! Man, you move fast, O'Connell."

"Oh shut up, Fleischman. It was a weird situation...are you gonna editorialize all the way through this story? Or can you be quiet for two minutes?" 

"Two minutes? You've worked your way through two different boyfriends so far and still haven't told me how you came to start flying."

"If you'd shut up, I'm coming to it."

Joel kissed her shoulder and moved his head closer to hers on her pillow. "Keep going. I'll try to restrain myself. Your life is just more ridiculous than I'd previously considered, that's all."

"Uh huh. So Glen was a helicopter pilot. Obviously. I came with him to work sometimes, and I'd hang around the airport, kill time, look for job postings. They had this bulletin board I checked, and I'd pull phone numbers to call about things sometimes. Called one once and before I knew it, I was taking lessons in a little Piper PA-28. I loved it. _And_ I was really good. So I kept doing it, graduated eventually, and spent the rest of my law school money on my plane. I flew mail, supplies, charters, stuff like that out of Anchorage for about a year. Did it enough I got certified as an instructor and then started teaching. Did that until the winter of '88 after Glen was...gone."

"Fishing accident?"

"Missile range. Bruce was the fishing guy. Well, potato salad _while_ fishing. He and I only went out a couple of weeks after Glen, though."

"What'd, you meet Rick at his funeral, then?"

"No," she said, elbowing Joel playfully in the stomach. "I flew Maurice back and forth a couple of times and let him talk me into moving to Cicely. He wanted the mail to come more regularly, get more tourism here, so he bought my routes and me along with 'em. I kind of hated Anchorage anyway. Bruce came, but, you know... And after that Rick wanted to learn to fly, only Red's not an instructor. And _that_ 's how I met Rick. So. That's the story."

"So I owe this relationship to Maurice Minnifield and a chance flight school flyer on a bulletin board in the Anchorage airport? I'm not sure what to do with that, to be honest. I mean, here I am, present only because of a million-to-one shot scholarship binding me to this specific place. That _you're_ here by pure chance, too... that's just a little too kismet for my taste, O'Connell." 

"And you said you don't believe in fate."

"I don't. But coincidence upon coincidence... it's just....odd. I don't know."

She decided to up the ante a little more and rolled over to put her forehead to Joel's, smiling. "Then you'll love the coda to this particular story. It was a flight school I managed to call. But I was actually trying to call a hotel about a front desk job. I had written the wrong damn number down somehow. I don't know why, exactly, but instead of hanging up, I just asked them what their tuition was. And I had plenty left to cover it. So I figured it was a sign and started taking flying lessons."

"Hold on. It was a _mistake_? You're telling me you got into flying not even because of something as fickle as blind chance but because you took the wrong _number_ down off a bulletin board flyer!?"

"Yeah," Maggie said, kissing him. "I was _this_ close to moving back east, and then that happened. And now here _we_ are."

He was quiet for several seconds. "So if I hadn't taken that scholarship? And if _you_ hadn't met some guy by chance at a party ten years ago, followed him here, had him die on you so you'd meet a pilot so you'd be hanging around an airport so you could take down the right wrong phone number and then had _him_ die, too, right before you meet Maurice so you'd be willing to move...I mean, if _one thing_ in that chain hadn't happened just like that..."

She kissed him and rolled back over to snuggle into her pillow and his arms again. "Not to mention if I hadn't stopped taking my pills after you moved out."

"So if none of that had happened exactly like that, we wouldn't be here right now?" 

"Maybe. You still don't believe in fate?"

"O'Connell..." He sounded dissettled and thrown off. She tried not to laugh.

"You're the one who wanted to know how I started flying. See the thing is, Fleischman, fate's kind of like gravity. It doesn't matter whether you believe in it. It just _is_. Sweet dreams."


	9. Chapter 9

"You ready for this?"

They'd parked down the hill a bit from Maurice's lodge to camouflage their arrival a bit. Maggie'd had Ruth Anne say she was coming to the event but that she'd be late. She was often away for stretches at a time flying, so her absence this last week had barely registered with anyone beyond Ruth Anne and Chris.

"Why wouldn't I be, Fleischman?" _Other than because I have no idea how to even start explaining this..._

"Because you still haven't told me what you're telling people this weekend," Joel said, smiling at her as he slung their two duffel bags over his shoulder. "Or what I'm supposed to say. And I'm betting it's because you still don't know." _God, it's annoying when you read my mind like that._

"We didn't rob a bank," Maggie's said, hooking her elbow through Joel's free arm. She'd never been much of a hand-holder - it seemed a little childish, frankly - so linking arms was a fair compromise in her mind. Close but not cloying. "You and I aren't trying to get our stories straight before the DA comes in for questioning. We can just tell people the truth." The last rays of sunlight began to disappear as they started up the long gravel drive. 

"Which is?"

" _Fleischman_..." Shs tried to sound scolding, hoping they'd leave the topic. She just wanted to fast forward to the part where everyone knew and everything was back to normal again. She brushed non-existent dust off his chest and hugged closer to him. "Did I tell you I liked this shirt?"

"You're only flirting with me because you have no idea what to say. And you're hoping I'll do it for you. O'Connell, you've had a week to figure this out."

"Well, what do you suggest?"

"How about that I inadvertently got you pregnant when you and Chris were still going out, and now I have to move back here and marry you in a long shot bid to rehabilitate your tarnished reputation?"

"There's a thousand places to hide a body in the woods here, Fleischman," she shot back, threatening him while hugging a little closer against his arm. "And no one but me knows you've come back so far."

"Ruth Anne does," he retorted.

"She'd be first in line to help me dispose of whatever’s left of you, if I asked." Maggie was only half-joking. Ruth Anne was fiercely protective of her. And still not entirely convinced of Joel's worthiness. He'd gotten the furthest along that path of anyone, though, where Ruth Anne was concerned.

"Why am I not surprised that you two have already discussed this," he said nonchalantly. She snuck another sideways look at him, and he was still smiling broadly, looking up at the bright and barely waning moon lifting up from the horizon. The air was pleasantly warm tonight - weather much more like June than the end of April. Near perfect.

He'd proposed this morning. Formally. Not that it was a big surprise - she'd showed him the ring she'd bought herself in New York while she unpacked her knapsack over breakfast. The event, therefore, started off inauspiciously, as so many did for them...

"O'Connell. Forgive my sounding far too conservative here, but the guy usually gives the girl the ring, doesn't he?"

"Yeah," she said, snapping the black velvet box closed and putting it on the table beside her bowl. "But you were working all week. And have bad taste in jewelry. I saw what I liked, so I bought it. It's kind of a formality at this point, isn't it? It doesn't need to be a whole production, you can just ask. Or not. You already have my answer. I can just start wearing it and then -"

"No." He pulled the box towards him, stood, and gave her an exasperated look as he re-opened it. "I know I'm not the most romantic guy in the world, and I know we've already had this conversation. But there's pragmatism and then there's you putting on the ring you bought yourself over a bowl of cereal. Let me do a little bit better than that, okay?" He dropped dutifully to one knee and asked her to forget they were them and to indulge him in tradition for thirty seconds. He did well enough on the spur of the moment that he'd obviously been practicing. She teared up a little, even - stupid hormones. 

She looked again at him walking beside her now, up Maurice's cabin drive. He seemed happy. _Was_ happy, she was pretty sure. She'd been a little worried that Cicely's sameness would overtake him again and he'd revert, but he was relaxed and untroubled. Tired from traveling, sure, extremely jetlagged, and still overwhelmed, she knew, by the changes the last week had wrought, but happy. She, too, was very, very content right now - she was back home, he was with her, and they had a whole future together that was clear now. Mostly. Plus, they were about to be reunited with the town that constituted her extended family and share their news. Once they figured out how, that is. Every once in awhile, she worried she might open her eyes up and the last week would disappear like a dream. And how much she'd miss it if it did.

"So when _do_ you want to get married?" _Damn. He would ask that, right when I'm thinking about how great things are going - he'd pivot us right to the shakiest of shaky ground_. "And please don't say 'eventually' again. Whatever we end up saying inside, I'm completely certain the very next question about both bombshells we're about to drop will be 'when'. And I only know the answer for one of those whens. What's the other?"

"I don't know, Fleischman, we _will_...I just need some...time. Okay?"

"Why? What, do you want to have a big ceremony or something?" He was still smiling and chuckled fondly. "I thought you said you hated weddings." She remembered all at once their conversation, years ago, in the middle of Main Street, about her marrying Rick and he marrying Elaine. And berating his bad socks. She smiled. They needed to exit this topic immediately, though.

"I do. No, I mean, I _don't_. What I'm trying to say is, no, I'm not a big fan of weddings, even though, yes, I do want to marry _you_ , but, no, I _don't_ need a big ceremony. Except, yes, I _do_ need a little more time. Okay? I can't tell you why, either. But it's not a bad thing. Promise." Worry crossed his face. This was not going at all the way it needed to; he was going to take this entirely the wrong way. "Really, it's not you, it's me..."

"That's not a reassuring sentence. Particularly since you've said something similar to me before..." He stopped walking, dropped her arm, and turned to face her, smile gone. Damn. He already had taken it the wrong way. " _Do_ you want to get married? Is that what this is really about? Did you change your mind again?" He looked miserable now. She sighed. So much for surprises; she'd just have to tell him. 

"I do. Really. Look. Give me three months. Okay? Just three. And it's not a big deal. I promise. I’d get married tomorrow. But that's what the rabbi said it would take."

"Take for what? And what rabbi?"

"The guy at your parents' temple. Remember that afternoon when I told you I went to the natural history museum? I, uh, I didn't go." _Come on, Fleischman. Figure it out. I promise there's nothing to be upset about here._

"Oh, come on, O'Connell. You didn't go? That was my favorite field trip as a little kid. I thought you'd love it. The Egyptian room and..." He made a face as his brain finally caught what she said. "Hold on, why'd you go my temple?" 

"Yeah, well, that's just it - little kids. _Our_ kid, specifically." One hand moved to twist the hair at her shoulder nervously. "See, the thing is, I thought the rule was if they're gonna be Jewish, then... _I_ have to be. So I will. Only it takes a lot longer than I thought it would. So since I'm doing that anyway, I thought maybe if we waited, we could wait and do our ceremony after I..."

"Wait, hold on. Go back. Are you trying to tell me you're _converting_? For me?"

She nodded shyly, not sure whether he'd welcome this news or get like he did sometimes when she tried to get involved in this side of his life.

"I mean, here you quit your job, came all the way back to Alaska, and you've been nothing but great about all of this. Mostly. And I'm really not all that religious myself, and I know this is important to you and..."

He wrapped both arms around her suddenly and picked her up, turning them around as he did. She flashed back to that night in the woods, years ago, when he'd dragged her and Ed out to prove Adam existed and found that stupid garlic press - him kissing her cheek and spinning her around joyfully, just like this.

"Fleischman, put me down," she protested, smiling. "You're going to hurt yourself. You are not that strong, and I'm getting bigger by the minute."

He brought her back down to the ground and kissed her before hugging her back to him and nuzzling her hair. "Oh, you are not. I can barely see anything, and I even know to look."

"I am so. I'm the size of a house. I've gained three pounds in a week. _Your_ baby is making _me_ huge."

" _Baby_?!" Came a third voice from nearby, at the bottom of Maurice's steps. They turned. Shelly. Shit. Well, at least they wouldn't have to wonder how they were telling people now. She'd tell everyone. And fast. "Mags, you've got a bun in the oven? Wait, _Dr. F._?! What're you doing here? " Her mental wheels were spinning a second before the light went on. "Whoa... You're not the guy who put it there, are you?" Her jaw dropped at whatever she saw in their faces. "You _are_! Oh, oh this is just _too_ too... but I thought it was you and Chris now, Maggie. How'd Dr. F sneak one past _both_ of you?"

"Not to belabor the point, my dear, but you still haven't told me what we're going to say," Joel murmured into Maggie’s hair. "And now we're out of time. So I am not getting in trouble with you over whatever happens next when this all goes wrong. Because it's going to. And I told you so. Repeatedly. We can talk about the other thing later. I can't believe you're doing that for me. I love you." Joel kissed her cheek again, pulled back, and gave her a grin before unwinding his arms from around Maggie.

"Hey, Shelly," he started, turning to face her. "Well, um-"


	10. Chapter 10

"All done," Maggie said, putting the last dish on the drying rack as Joel dried his hands next to her at the sink. "Glass of wine?"

"If you think I'm approving that as your physician, you're crazy."

"I wasn't _asking_ for one; I'm offering _you_ one. I was going to make some chamomile tea for me. I thought it'd be nice to just sit and talk. After this weekend and everything." The weekend had been...well, suffice it to say, her and Joel's news was some of the _least_ surprising of what emerged over the last 24 hours. 

"Oh." He hung the towel on the hook on the refrigerator. "Sure. Why not. I can pour it myself, though."

"I'm not gonna secretly swig wine out of the bottle when you're not looking, Fleischman," she said, pulling her tea kettle and a wine glass out of the cabinet. "Sit. I'll bring 'em over."

She uncorked the bottle and poured as he walked towards the living room, defending himself as he moved. "That's not what I meant. I just don't want to be the guy who's got a pregnant woman waiting on him hand and foot. And I really didn't think you wanted to be that woman. But if you insist, hey, don't let me stop you..." He sat down and put both feet up on the coffee table. "That was a bizarre weekend, don't you think? I mean, even for here. Even considering this group. Completely bizarre. It's not just me, right?"

He wasn't wrong. New couples. Old couples. Arguing couples. Oversexed couples. People getting lost. People getting found. People announcing they were leaving. Joel's quiet return and news that she and he were 'just' making it official and having a baby was mundane by comparison. 

"No," she said as she pulled a mug out of another cabinet. "For once, you were one of the more normal and easygoing people present. Which is saying something. Here." She walked into the living room handed him an overfull glass of merlot before turning back to tend to her kettle. "Sorry 'bout that. Bottle got away from me a little."

"Jeez, O'Connell, that's a hell of a healthy pour. What, are you planning on trying to take advantage of me later or something?"

"I don't need to get you drunk; you're easy," she said, laughing a little as she unwrapped her teabag and nestled it in her cup, looping its string through the mug's handle. 

"You're right," he said, sipping his wine. She watched him settle into her couch and sip his wine. He looked rumpled and cute in his fussy but mismatched evening clothes - a patterned button down shirt with its sleeves rolled up over long underwear paired with faded blue sweatpants. He was perennially cold.

"Speaking of that, though," she started back in. The water wasn't yet boiling so she killed time, walking back out towards him, stretching her arms over her head. "Could you believe Holling and Shelly?"

"What about 'em?"

She put one knee on the arm of the couch next to him, watching him take a sip from his glass. "Apart from the fact you couldn't peel 'em off each other all weekend?"

"Oh, O'Connell, they're always like that," he said, taking another sip, leaning forward, and putting his glass down on the table. "You know, he told me once they had sex _five times_ a day?"

"Wanna give them a run for their money," she asked teasingly. He turned to grin at her.

"Yeah?" He put his hand on the knee next to him. 

The teakettle started to squeal. "Sorry. Missed your opening, Fleischman," she said, starting for the kitchen. 

"Hey, you're the one trying to ply me with alcohol tonight."

Maggie smiled to herself. He was fun when he was cheerful and flirting like this. 

"Feel bad for Maurice, though..."

"Why?" Maggie removed whistling kettle from her stove with a hotpad. 

"Because I think he imagined this weekend going differently than it did."

"What, his party? It was nice. Sort of."

"No, him and Barbara."

"They ended up engaged."

" _Eventually_ ," Joel said, watching Maggie for a reaction she put the hot water into her mug. She didn't pay him off. "They really took their time in getting there, though. And argued most of the way."

"Sounds familiar," she said fondly as she reentered the living room and set her mug down next to his glass. He took her hand and gave it a gentle tug, pulling her down to sit next to him. He picked his glass back up as they settled in, putting their feet up together on the coffee table. She thought back to that night his first year here when the ice was cracking and her burst into her old place. _I can't stop thinking about you_ before collapsing together onto the couch.

"So," he said, sneaking a sidelong glance at her. She saw it, and he saw her see it. He smiled slowly.

"So." There were ten thousand things they needed to talk about. Eventually. This was nice, though. Strange, but nice. Companionable silence was a rarity between them. His fingers curled gently through hers against her thigh as he took another sip of wine.

"Just us again."

"Yeah," she perched free hand on her middle. _Just the three of us_. They still hadn't talked about it. Him. Her. Which would it be?

He gave her hand a fond squeeze. "You think it's a boy or a girl?" _Maybe he was clairvoyant._ That was a semi-terrifying thought.

"What, the baby?"

He chuckled. "No, your truck. Yes, the baby, O'Connell. We've hardly talked about this. I know you're thinking about it though. I am, too."

"I...I honestly don't know. I can't picture it." She hesitated, feeling like she should walk on eggshells. She didn't want him to misinterpret this. But she'd tried and nothing came when she did. Short or tall. Fair or dark. Even boy or girl. "The baby. I mean, I've tried to. Really, I have. But I just draw a blank every time." _Except for your eyes. I don't know a thing about our baby, but I know they'll have your eyes_... "That doesn't make me a bad...mother..." The word came out slowly, felt foreign. She'd never used it to describe herself. Not even in her mind. "Does it?"

"No," he said quietly. Both their eyes were on their hands, clasped together in her lap. She squeezed his tighter. "It makes you very normal, O'Connell. Every mother I talk to feels like they aren't doing something right." He shifted his gaze to the wine glass in his other hand, turning it slightly from side to side. Thinking. Pondering. "I kind of hope it's a girl," he said, after several quiet seconds. 

"What? You do?" He wanted a _girl_? She would have never guessed that in a hundred tries.

"Yeah." He set his wine glass down again. "And before you ask, I don't know why. I just do."

"Well, I hope it's a boy, then." 

He turned sideways on the couch to face her, grinning. "What a surprise you'd take the contrary position to mine." His smile grew. "Well, I still hope it's a girl."

"Guess we'll just have to wait seven months and see who's right."

"Guess so." She reached for her mug and turned to sit knee to knee, facing Joel. She could tell it was still far too hot to drink, but the warm ceramic felt good against her hands, and she clutched it, balanced on one knee. "Saw you talking to Chris."

With that, Joel broke eye contact and reached sideways for his glass again. "Yeah," he said, trying to sound as lighthearted as possible. 

"You guys okay?"

"I guess. I mean, we could hardly talk about... you know, that. _This_. Either."

"Right."

"I met that girl, though. Also named Chris."

"Yeah. She seemed nice," Maggie said, meaning it. No part of her regretted ending it. Chris never seemed like he'd been in love with her. In love with the thought of being in love, maybe, but not with her. Not like Joel. "I don't know how they're going to deal with the name thing. I'm happy for him, though."

"Really? And it doesn't make you the slightest bit jealous? _You_? That a week after you guys broke up, he'd already fallen in love with someone else."

"It might. If he'd ever claimed to be in love with me. Or I with him." Maggie took a small sip of her tea, blowing across it first to cool it. Still too hot. "But we weren't. So I'm not. No one's jealous, Fleischman. Of anyone. Which is the best outcome anyone could hope for in something like this. And I think it's very 'Chris' of him to find someone like that."

"Out in the woods? Yeah. He's picked up more women hiking out in the brush than I've had girlfriends in my entire life. He never struck me as a love at first sight kind of guy, though."

"Wasn't first sight. At least this time. He's been in love with her forever. Just didn't know how to find her. They met a long time ago."

" _Really_? Where? And what was she doing up here, looking for him, too?"

"No. Just hiking. It was pure coincidence. Fate. Remember that time he went and lived at that monastery? She lived there. That's how they met."

"Not to nit pick, O'Connell, but there tend not to be women at those places. Fate or not."

"I don't know what to tell you. That's what he said. I believe him." She paused. "Hey, speaking of. We should put the radio on. See what's going on."

"It's Sunday night in Cicely, Alaska, O'Connell. I can assure you the right answer is 'absolutely nothing'."

"Well, I'm turning it on anyway," she said, rising and walking across the room to her stereo. "Otherwise I just have _you_ to listen to."

"Thanks, I love you, too, honey," he said sardonically as the room filled with sound - a 30s era song she sort of recognized. She adjusted the volume down a little and headed back to the couch. She sat closer to him this time. He tucked her under his arm and pulled her close.

Everything felt so right but almost like it didn't have the right to at the same time. It hadn't been that long since they'd sat here together, shyly, on their first date. Or since he'd knelt before her as she sat in 'his' chair, when she ended things between them. The chain of events that led them here was so tenuous and so fragile...

"What?" He murmured. 

"I didn't say anything."

"No, but you're emitting anxiousness. I can feel it. What's wrong?"

"I don't know... you kind of said it in bed the other night. I mean, if it weren't for, well, a lot of stuff - Elaine leaving you, Rick and all of them dying, you taking that scholarship, me learning to fly and moving here, this baby, everything - we wouldn't be sitting here together right now. That doesn't bother you?"

"No. I thought it didn't bother you either. In fact, I distinctly recall you laughing about it two days ago - taking great pleasure, I might add - over _my_ discomfort with it."

"Yeah, but now I've been thinking about it and it's kind of a lot of... It bothered you before, too. Why doesn't it now?"

"I don't know." He kissed her through her hair. "Just doesn't. Maybe you managed to talk me into believing in fate. A little bit."

" _You_? Joel Fleischman? The pragmatic, rational, boring scientist? You suddenly believe in predestination?"

"I wouldn't go that far. Serendipity, maybe. Chris found the love of his life hiking in the woods. Maurice and Barbara finally figured it out. The state gave Phil the job I spent 5 years hoping they'd give me down in Anchorage, so I can have this one back and Michelle gets to get out of here but stay in Alaska. Even Ruth Anne and Walt seem to have come to a truce. And then some."

"They're sweet, aren't they?"

"Yeah. See? I guess you could say fate made a pretty good case for itself this weekend, and I'm considering it. Speaking of dogma, though..." He tapped her socked foot with his. "You gonna learn Hebrew or anything like that?"

"Baruch atah Adonai, Elohenu Melech ha’olam, shehecheyanu... um..." She furrowed her brow, trying to remember the next word. "Hold on..."

"V’Kiyimanu..." he prompted, looking at her fondly.

"Right. V'Kiyimanu v’higiyanu la'zman hazeh." She raised her eyebrow triumphantly. 

"I'm impressed, O'Connell. You speak better Hebrew than I do."

"Of course I do," she said, taking her legs down and sitting forward to grab up her mug with a flourish. She could feel his reaction- rolling his eyes - and leapt quickly to her own defense. "Well, I _do_. I have knack for languages. I speak French. Kind of. And a little Spanish. You don't know any other languages."

"I do so. Latin."

" _Living_ languages," she said, taking another small sip of her tea, before settling back against his shoulder and putting her feet back up next to his. "Hebrew aside, we can still put up a Christmas tree, right?"

"Anything you want," he said, leaning over to kiss her. "Within reason, of course."

"Good," she said, smiling against his lips, "Except we don't define reasonable the same way."

"Never have," he said, smiling, too. The song in the radio ended, and Chris' voice faded in over its last chords.

"That was 'The Very Thought of You' by Miss Billie Holiday. Another selection from our old cherub pal Cupid's personal library tonight. If you didn't hear already, or decipher it from what I've got spinning here on air tonight, friends, yours truly experienced a truly soul-stirring epiphany over the weekend. I think most of us would agree, the world's full of everyday miracles. A seed finds its spot and digs its root into the earth, to become one with it and send life aloft. People change for the better before your very eyes. A mother cradles her child for the first time." Joel's hand drifted to stroke Maggie's middle and she smiled. 

"Falling in love, though," Chris continued on air, "Man... I mean, it's got to be most routine of miracles, and yet, if it happens to you... _when_ it happens to you... well, you'll know it when you see it. And it _will_... 'Cause you've got time to wait for it. Age doesn't protect us from love. But love, man, love sure can protect us from age." Maggie pictured Walt and Ruth Anne in her mind, walking together along Main Street.

"The point is, my friends, as of Saturday, I've officially stopped aging. Rounded a corner. You're hearing it here first: Chris Stevens is a bachelor no more. She's standing here smiling at me through the station window, and the clock's reached eleven. So, I'll end this broadcast day on a familiar one. A great one. A fitting one, for a lot of folks tonight. And I'll see you all here bright and early, a different man but at same spot on the dial here at 780 on KBHR. Until then, I hope you all take a couple minutes tonight to pull hard on those hands of time, bring 'em to a stop and then hold close to someone you love. Bask in the phenomenon of an everyday miracle like love. Goodnight, Cicely. This one's for you."

The sweet and familiar sounds of a string orchestra filled the room, and Maggie was immediately transported back to another night, another one that seemed all at once a lifetime away but also only a few moments ago. She'd felt like a pariah when Joel appeared. He'd chided her for her fatalism and especially for her smoking when this same music had prompted him to smile and tug her out of her seat at the Brick. They danced close together, not caring for those few minutes about what everyone might suspect or whether the other might realize just how much each was relishing the chance to be so close.

As Ella's warm and silvery voice began to sing, Joel rose from the couch and stood in front of her, extending his hand. "Dance with me, O'Connell." 

"What? Here? Why? You _never_ dance."

"C'mon." She put her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet. "If ever we had a song, this is it."

"I don't think Chris played it with us in mind," she said, as he turned, arm extended, and twirled her slowly around at arm's length through their living room. He crooked his arm in to change her trajectory and bring her orbit in close. She put her right hand to his shoulder, her left still entwined with his against his chest. "Must be fate, Fleischman."

"Must be..." He said quietly as they swayed together, cheek to cheek, in front of their fireplace.

_You smiled, you smiled  
Oh, and then the spell was cast  
And here we are in heaven  
For you are mine at last..._


	11. Chapter 11

She was born on a Tuesday. November 7. Her due date. Punctual, just like her father. The birth, though, was every ounce as chaotic as her mother. 

Joel had told Maggie at least fifty times the baby wouldn't be born on time - that a hugely low percentage of babies, particular first babies, showed up on their due dates. If anything, he'd said, it'd be late. She wasn't. As it turned out, Joel had been wrong about a lot. That, or Maggie's body simply sought out ways to contradict him. 

For one thing, he'd told Maggie she'd be little - maybe 7 pounds, more likely six and half - since Maggie was so small and he wasn't exactly a giant himself. She'd come wailing into this world a big bruiser of a thing, weighing every last bit of the 8 pounds, 15 ounces Joel had recorded in a daze on her birth certificate. She was long, too - 22 inches. A sign of things to come. She grew like a weed and ended up with a few inches on both her parents - four inches taller than her mother and two inches taller than her father. Two _and a half_ inches, if you asked Maggie and wanted to see Joel roll his eyes.

She was born at 9 am. An early riser like both her parents, but another miss for Joel, who said most first time mothers went into labor after dinner and had their babies sometime after midnight. That particular error - implying only an eight hour labor awaited her - had earned Maggie's longlasting and scornful irritation. It started first thing Monday morning, and she'd labored 23 hours, every minute unpleasant and much of it in his familiar office on Main Street. A rotating cast of delivery nurses relieved Marilyn for an hour at a time so she could rest. Everyone from Ruth Anne to Shelly to a highly discomfited Maurice had held Maggie's hand, fed her ice chips, and listened to her colorfully cursing Joel for doing this to her. Marilyn, though, had been the one by her side when the moment finally came. Joel, however, had not. He was too busy bringing own his daughter into the world.

Another miss by him. A big one. He'd sworn he couldn't deliver her - _wouldn't_ deliver her. Not that he wasn't a meticulous OB, a doting father-to-be, and, for the last two months of her pregnancy, a devoted husband. But for the big event, he'd said for months that he was far too emotionally entangled with his current patient and his soon-to-be newest patient to act as delivery doctor. Phil promised to fly in from Anchorage the weekend before and be there to do the honors. A comedy of errors ensued, from Red exposing him to chicken pox, taking him out of the on deck circle, to a freak late fall blizzard the following weekend that grounded every other doctor and pilot from Fairbanks to Kenai into their home airports. 

With everything he'd gotten wrong, though, Joel had been right that she was a girl. He'd never wavered on that point. Maggie, throughout her pregnancy, was certain the baby'd be a he. So much so, she'd insisted that Joel paint the nursery (one she'd added onto their house herself) blue. He continually balked, and they compromised with a pale cornflower shade. One that ended up matching well the many pink teddy bears, footed pajamas, and receiving blankets that they'd gotten in the weeks that followed her arrival. Maybe knowing all along they were going to have girl is why he had a name at the ready. In a rare moment of consensus between them, she'd loved it and readily agreed.

Amelia O'Connell Fleischman. The name had many origins beyond the obvious one. It was Hebrew, German, English, even Latin - in every language, it meant 'industrious', and it suited her to a t. She was tenacious and brilliant like her father, hitting every milestone ahead of what the baby books all said was normal. Her parents' exhaustion stood as evidence that she was also always busy and never 'off'. Just like her mother. 

She had both her parents' verbose nature - possibly the only shared attribute of theirs that she bore. She lacked, however, their argumentative nature and always served as peacemaker - most often in her own home with her own parents. Amelia had _his_ sense of humor and _her_ dauntless spirit; _his_ studious nature and _her_ mechanical inclination; _his_ sensitivity and _her_ gregariousness... the list went on and on. She was every bit of the very best things about Joel Fleischman and Maggie O'Connell. Right down to Joel's expressive, dark eyes, about which Maggie had always been right, even back on the day before Joel ever knew his life had changed.

And so it was that she was born and grew up in a tiny town of no real consequence to anyone but those who lived there, nestled deep in the middle of Alaska, the only daughter of two parents that somehow loved her as much they loved each other - no small feat. 

She left that town worldly beyond her years. They traveled every summer, even when she was very young. No longer an indentured servant of Maurice's and with Phil more than willing to relieve him for longer summer stretches, they traveled often. London, Tokyo, Hawaii, Cairo...and, of course, Queens. Every so often to Grosse Pointe. Maggie's parents were some of the last to know, but both were happy. Her mother because she could brag that her daughter had snared an Ivy League doctor; her father because she stuck with the one he'd met - the one he'd liked. The one she could count on. 

Their daughter had a passport before she was a year old and had been to ten countries before she was five. With all their journeys, her first name, and her mother's profession, it was no big surprise that she ended up a licensed hobby pilot at nineteen. Her father's job, though, was her true calling.

She made it through college in three years, and graduated with honors from medical school with her choice of residencies. Once she'd made it through, she made her career and left her mark at a teaching hospital in Portland, a fair but not impossible distance from the roughly 800 Cicelian aunts and uncles that had helped raise her. She came home several times each year to see them all. And to see her parents, who doted from a distance, still living together in the house with the broken front step that she'd grown up in. The same parents, who, for reasons they never explained to her, spent every Valentine's day camping together in the freezing cold in the Aleutian islands...


End file.
